L'Unita' d'Italia, 150 years

 We call it St. Patrick's Day.  The Italians call it, at least for this year, festa dell'Unita' d'Italia, 150 anni.  Alright, it was violent.  Did it actually work?  I shan't go into that here, but last Wednesday was the 150th anniversary of the Risorgimento. 

 Everything closed that day.  No work, no school, not much in the way of public transportation.  Instead, parades, bands, concerts, museums opened free to the public, flags (the "tricolore") everywhere.  And, where there weren't flags, they made do anyway.

 Now, the idea of the risorgimento was pretty anti-religious.  But, they couldn't take that out of the Italian mentality, so for this completely secular holiday, they started with a vigil at vespertina the night before.  That is when they started the concerts and opened the museums.  My sick friend who stays with a family outside of Viterbo (a post I'll save for later) came into town with her host family and went to concerts and museums until 2am, and then went back the hour train ride and additional car ride home.

 Besides the vigil, they had to have the octave, with flag decorations everywhere for the next week.  So, even though I post it a week after the event, it's only today that some of the decorations are coming down.  However, the great monstrosity monument at Piazza Venezia was only lit up for the actual feast.

 I found it interesting that the various streets decorated as though for Christmas, but with flags and colored flowers instead of the various decorations they used for Christmas.  In the planter above one can no longer see the red and white geranium blooms, but these were placed on the sides of the buildings all up and down that particular street.

 The evening of the festa, I met up with a friend/classmate from Guatemala, and we celebrated with a hot chocolate that seemed just like dark chocolate melted, and then a walk around town.

 My classmate had to take lots of pictures of Trajan's column all lit up in red, white and green.  And of the flowers planted at Piazza Venezia for the event.  I just took the one of the lit up monument and the funny-costumed Italians singing in front of it in capes and funny caps.

 Window displays intrigued me, and I thought I would capture some of the spirit of the holiday with these various creative celebrations of the Italian colors.