Spello

Spello is a small Umbrian hill town south east of it's more famous neighbour, Assisi.  Town pre-dates Roman times and you can tell as you walk around it's narrow lanes.  It is a beautiful town to visit with it's steep, narrow lanes and everywhere you look in spring and summer, there are colourful flower boxes and gardens full of colour.

This is all a carry over from an elderly woman's idea one Sunday in late June in the early 1900's, just before the Feast of Corpus Domini.  She decided to make a carpet of flowers outside her house for the procession .  She climbed the slopes of Mount Subasio behind the town and gathered armfuls of brilliant yellow broom and mossy green fennel and laid it all out in a patterned floral carpet on the cobble stones in front of her house.  Her actions created great impact in the town and now the festival is known in the town as Corpus Domini Infiorata.  Now the festival is marked by about 2,000 of the towns folk spending hours preparing intricate floral carpet master pieces made from various flowers, seed pods and leaves.  They compete for one another for the most amazing floral carpet for the festival and spend months preparing for the all night effort to put the floral carpet down, sometimes on carefully sketched out designs on the cobble stones or templates that have been carefully designed and labelled.  These days there are about 80 of these floral carpets covering the streets and piazza of the town for the procession.  Just the scents of all these flowers being used for this event are intoxicating.  Young and old work together day and night with boxes of petals and flowers to create these amazing tapestries of vivid colour.

After all this effort, the procession itself is full of ceremony and colour, with the Bishop walking under an elaborately embroidered gold coloured canopy held aloft by other Corpus Domini members in white tunics with bright yellow cloaks.  The official party is flanked by the security forces of local Carabinieri in formal ceremonial uniforms with hats adorned with bright blue and red feathers. Stunning.  The locals also participate in the ceremony, following the procession chanting prayers.  Before you know it, these stunning works of art are reduced to mush under the feet of those in the procession and the faithful followers. Va bene, as they say in Italy!

Whilst started in Spello, L'Infiorata (from the Italian verb meaning to decorate with flowers) is now also performed in other towns around the region.

If you are in the area, this is an event not to be missed and in 2011 it will occur on 24th June.  We were in the area in 2007 and missed it - big mistake!