We were in Napoli the first Sat in May so we were there for the Feast of San Gennaro! I had never heard of this before I was looking at things to do while we were there, but I was pretty excited once I found out. Every year on the Saturday before the first Sunday in May (and also two other times a year - the really big festival is Sept 19th) the saints blood liquifies. Or it is supposed to. It is good fortune for Napoli if it does. Then the blood is on display for 8 days before it goes back in the vault (or wherever they keep it). I couldn't find much online about when the festivities would be since it was not the big celebration so we headed over to the Duomo early in the morning to check it out. Inside they had all of their silver saint statues lined up ready to go for later in the afternoon.
Since we hd some time we wandered around and explored some more. It was much busier since it was Saturday.
Any guesses what this building is?
A church of course! This is the inside of the weird, prison like building.
We showed up early to the Duomo since we didn't know how busy it would be. I have a ton of photos of the fun, so I will only post a few. If you want to see the all I believe you can click on the above photo and be taken to the album.
When it was time each of the statues came out one by one and the priest said a few words about each of them. Well I am assuming he was talking about them since it was all in Italian and I do not know Italian. It was pretty funny watching them go down the stairs and line up for the procession as you couldn't really see the people carrying them because of the crowd so it was like they were floating walking.
See there wasn't a crazy amount of people, but it was fun
And the blood had liquified! Yey!
So let the procession begin
Action shot from Raymond
Raymond and I both liked this one best
The blood is in the dark round part of the metal thing in front in this photo.
Following the procession - we didn't really follow the whole thing. We were headed back towards our place after all the fun and it was going the same way until they turned down a different road.
But then we caught up with them again! They were heading towards us on a road we needed to go down. Fun!
They had acquired a band at some point
It was a lot of fun. I am glad we were there for it, though the one in Sept is supposed to be really like a party - vendors on the streets, decorations, etc. Still I enjoyed it.
Raymond's favorite corner - we walked by here almost every day.
More wandering after the festivities
Crazy trees that were thorny
I'll stop here for now since next up is our adventures on Mt Vesuvius!
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