The Carnival revels take many forms in Italy, from Venice’s elegant masks to Viareggio’s gigantic floats. To help you make the most of the merrymaking season, we have picked the best five festivals you absolutely should not miss.

The good thing about living in Italy is that you go from one holiday to another nearly seamlessly. Just as the Christmas season drew to a close in early January another one started—Carnival, the time of merrymaking.
Both Carnival’s name and history are somewhat unclear. Its roots lie deep in pre-Catholic Rome and the subversive revelries of Saturnalia, where slaves and masters exchanged places.
But Carnival as we know today is undoubtedly linked to Lent. A popular theory wants the name, Carnevale in Italian, to derive from the Latin words carnem levare, removing meat, implying that the festival was a time of carefree celebration before the somber days of Lent fasting.
Whether this is true or not, Carnival’s length and, often, start depend on Lent and Easter—when Easter falls late in the year, Carnival usually starts later and culminates in the Shrove Tuesday revels at the end of February.
That said, the festival’s religious implications end here. Even though the Church considers this a period of reflection, for most Italians Carnival is the time to let go and enjoy themselves.
Venice, with its triumph of rich costumes topped by hieratic masks, is of course the queen of the Italian revels, and a trip there is de rigueur, at least once in a lifetime, to plunge into the crowded, colourful, clangorous chaos of Piazza San Marco, admire a Baroque dame and her tricorned gallant sipping coffee at the dainty tables of the expensive Café Florian, or see the stark white masks and dark cloaks of three baute costumes (and their wearers) emerge like wraiths from the mist of a quiet side street late at night.
But there is more to Italian Carnival than Venice. Events take place throughout the country—from the snowy children parties of Courmayeur, in the Aosta valley, to the parade of gigantic floats in Sciacca, Sicily. And though these events can’t quite rival with Venice’s magic and sophistication, they bring something else to the Carnival party—reminiscences of popular rebellion against a tyrant in Ivrea’s battle of the oranges; an ancient dance to get rid of evil spirits in Mamoiada; or the bizarre but clever custom of Putignano’s revellers, who donate a candle to the Church on Boxing Day to ask pardon for their Carnival sins before having committed them.
Picking just three Carnival events to visit out of the many that take place between the end of January and the end of February is virtually impossible, so we have plumped for five. They are all very different from one another, but all worth a trip.

Venice

Ivrea

Viareggio

Putignano

Mamoiada