Every December 24 Abbadia San Salvatore, on Mount Amiata, returns to live its most beautiful festival. Sacred to the point of being lost in memory, so ancient that it is lost in the mists of time, the evening of the Torches (pyres of wood up to seven meters high) is not only a moment suspended in the dream waiting for Christmas, not only the renewal of ancestral liturgies handed down from father to son, from grandfather to grandson, but the perfect apex of an incomparable time that is rooted in the heart and DNA of every inhabitant of Abbadia.
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The “Torches” of Abbadia San Salvatore celebrate one of the oldest Italian fire festivals, born from a singular millenary tradition, intimately felt and very participatory, which in the city of Monte Amiata is renewed every December 24th.
The “torches” are typical pyramid-shaped piles of wood up to seven meters high which, built in each terziere of the small medieval village, rise to the sky waiting for the night of Christmas Eve when they will then be set on fire. An appointment that is already prepared in autumn when the “torchlighters” begin to look for the material with which to manufacture these unique rural monuments, the result of a demanding process that involves the whole community.
For months, in fact, thanks to special techniques that are handed down from generation to generation, branches are smoothed and trunks are woven in the streets and squares of the town, defying gravity. A painstaking work that unites young and old, in an exchange of knowledge that is tradition, heritage, baton to be passed. Around the “Torches” the past is linked to the future: an ancestral fire ritual is thus celebrated which, marrying symbolic pagan and religious meanings, tells of the powerful and indissoluble bond between man and nature.
The ceremony takes place every year with a traditional ritual. At 6 pm, in an intimate and spectacular moment capable of gathering hundreds of people, the Lighting Ceremony kicks off with the “Blessing of the Fire” which marks the beginning of the festival. The band plays Christmas carols and the torch in front of the Town Hall is lit with the sacred fire. This is the agreed signal: from here the Torch Leaders, with their blazing torches, carry the fire that will light the other dozens of Torches scattered in the historic center and throughout the rest of the town of Monte Amiata. A show full of magnetism and suggestion for a unique Christmas, which is not found anywhere else in the world.
Days
24 December 24
24 December 24
Timetable
18:00 - 00:00
Information/To know
Suitable for Everybody
Wheelchair accessible
Location/The place
Address
Abbadia San Salvatore, SI, Italia
How to get there
