Many of the festivals and annual events
you'll come across were - and in many
cases still are -
religion-inspired
affairs , centring on a local
miracle or saint's day.
Easter ,
certainly, is celebrated throughout
Europe, with most verve and ceremony in
Catholic and Orthodox Europe, where
Easter Sunday or Monday is usually
marked with some sort of procession;
it's especially enthusiastically
celebrated in Greece, where it is more
important even than Christmas, though be
aware that the Orthodox Church's Easter
can in fact fall a week or two either
side of the Western festival. Earlier in
the year, traditionally at the beginning
of
Lent in February,
Carnival
(or Mardi Gras) is celebrated, most
conspicuously (and perhaps most stagily)
in Venice, which explodes in a riot of
posing and colour to become one of
Italy's major tourist draws at this time
of year. There are smaller, perhaps more
authentic carnivals in
Viareggio
, also in Italy, and in Germany, Belgium
and the Netherlands, most notably in
Cologne
,
Maastricht and tiny
Binche
in the Ardennes, where you can view some
1500 costumed
Gilles or dancers
in the streets. Also in Belgium, in
mid-Lent, catch if you can the
procession of white-clad
Blanc
Moussis through the streets of
Stavelot in the Ardennes - one of
Europe's oddest sights. Other religious
festivals you might base a trip around
include the Festa di San Gennaro three
times a year in
Naples , when the
dried blood of the city's patron saint
is supposed to liquefy to prevent
disaster befalling the place - it rarely
fails; the Ommegang procession through
the heart of
Brussels city centre
to commemorate a medieval miracle; the
Heilig Bloed procession in
Bruges
, when a much-venerated relic of
Christ's blood is carried shoulder-high
through the town; and, in Italy, the
annual procession across
Venice
's Grand Canal to the church of the
Madonna della Salute to recall the
deliverance of the city from a
seventeenth-century plague. In Morocco
and Turkey, where the predominant
religion is Islam, and in the Muslim
areas of Bulgaria,
Ramadan ,
commemorating the revelation of the
Koran to Muhammad, is observed. The most
important Muslim festival, it lasts a
month, during which time Muslims are
supposed to fast from sunrise until
sunset - although otherwise, as far as
is possible, life carries on as normal.
There are, of course, other, equally
long-established events which have a
less obvious foundation. One of the
best-known is the April Feria in Seville
, a week's worth of flamenco music and
dancing, parades and bullfights, in a
frenziedly enthusiastic atmosphere. Also
in Spain, for a week in early July, the
San Fermín festival in Pamplona
is if anything even more famous, its
centrepiece - the running of the bulls
along with local macho men, through the
streets of the city - drawing tourists
from all over the world, though there is
much more to the festival than that.
Also in July, at the beginning of the
month (and again in mid-August), the
Palio in Siena is perhaps the
most spectacular annual event in Italy,
a bareback horse race between
representatives of the different
quarters of the city around the main
square, its origins dating back to
medieval times. It's a brutal affair,
with few rules and a great sense of
deeply felt rivalry, and, although there
are other Palio events in Italy, it's
like no other horse race you'll ever
see. At least as big a deal as the Palio
and San Fermín is the Munich
Oktoberfest, a huge beer festival and
fair that goes on throughout the last
two weeks in September. Unlike most
events of its size in Europe it's less
than two hundred years old, but it
attracts vast numbers of people to
consume gluttonous quantities of beer
and food. London 's Notting Hill
Carnival, held at the end of August, is
also a recent phenomenon, a
predominantly Black and Caribbean
celebration that's become the world's
second biggest street carnival after
Rio. Other, smaller events include the
great Venice Regata Storica, each
September, a trial of skill for the
city's gondoliers, and the gorgeous
annual displays and processions of
flowers in the Dutch bulbfield towns
in April and May.
Festivals celebrating all or one
specific aspect of the
arts are
held all over Europe throughout the
year, though particularly in summer,
when the weather is better suited to
outdoor events. Of general international
arts festivals, the
Edinburgh Arts
Festival held every August is
perhaps the best known and most
enjoyable, not to mention one of the
most innovative, with a mass of topnotch
and fringe events in every medium, from
rock to cabaret to modern experimental
music, dance and drama. For three weeks
every year the whole city is given over
to the festival and it's a wonderful
time to be around if you don't mind the
crowds and have booked somewhere to stay
in advance. There is another major
general arts festival in
Spoleto
, the Festival dei Due Mondi, held over
two months each summer, which is Italy's
leading international arts festival,
though on a somewhat smaller scale than
Edinburgh, while the midsummer
Avignon
festival in southern France is slanted
towards drama but hosts plenty of other
events besides and is again a great time
to be in town. Smaller general arts
festivals, though still attracting a
variety of international names, include
the
Holland Festival , held in
Amsterdam in June; the
Flanders
Festival , an umbrella title for all
sorts of dramatic and musical events
held mainly in the medieval buildings of
Bruges and Ghent in July and August; and
the
Dubrovnik Summer Festival ,
with a host of musical events and
theatre performances against the
backdrop of the town's beautiful
Renaissance centre.
As regards more specialist
gatherings, the Montreux Jazz
Festival in July and the North
Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague in
mid-July are the Continent's premier
jazz jamborees, while the same month
sees the beginning of the Salzburg
Music Festival , perhaps the
foremost - if also the most conservative
- serious music festival in Europe,
though London's Prom season
(July-Sept) maintains very high
standards at egalitarian prices.
Florence's Maggio Musicale is
also worth catching, a festival of opera
and classical music that runs from late
April until early July. Less highbrow
musical forms - rock, folk, etc - are
celebrated, most conspicuously at the
huge Glastonbury festival in
Britain; at the Pink Pop Festival
, held every June in Geleen near
Maastricht in the Netherlands; and the Roskilde
Festival in Denmark. Look out also
for the Womad get-togethers, a
number of which are usually held each
year at a variety of sites all over
Europe, celebrating World, folk and
roots music, and the excellent and still
relatively small Cambridge Folk
Festival in late July. For films
, there is, of course, Cannes ,
though this is more of an industry
affair than anything else, and the Venice
and Berlin film festivals, which
are more geared to the general public.
