Capodanno in Italy

Toasting the New Year the Italian way

New Year’s Day is called Capodanno in Italy, which literally means ‘head of the year’.

Teatro La Fenice in Venice

It is a public holiday, and schools, Government offices, post offices and banks are closed.

After a late start following the New Year’s Eve festivities, many families will enjoy another traditional feast together, either at home or in a restaurant.

Visitors and residents will attend church services throughout the country before sitting down to a festive meal and toasting 2016 with a glass of good Prosecco.

Rai Uno will be broadcasting a New Year’s Day concert live from La Fenice in Venice at 12.20 local time.

San Giuseppe Maria Tomasi

The Catholic Church remembers cardinal-priest Giuseppe Maria Tomasi di Lampedusa who died on this day in 1713.

He was the son of the Prince of Lampedusa in Sicily but he renounced his inheritance and joined a religious order.

Later in life he worked to reform the church and was created a cardinal-priest by Pope Clement XI who admired his sanctity.

He was buried in a church near his home after his death but his remains were later transferred to the Basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle in Rome and he was canonised by Pope John Paul II in 1986.

Travel tip:

La Fenice (the Phoenix ) is Venice’s world famous opera house, originally built in 1790. The name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to rise from the ashes after their previous theatre burnt down.  La Fenice was itself destroyed by fire in 1836 and had to be rebuilt. It was severely damaged by fire again in 1996 and rebuilt at a cost of more than 90 million euros, reopening seven years later. La Fenice is in Campo San Fantin, a short walk from Piazza San Marco.

The Basilica of Sant'Andrea
della Valle in Rome

Travel tip:

There is a shrine to San Giuseppe Maria Tomasi in the baroque Basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle in Corso Vittoria Emanuele II in Rome. The large church is also famous for being chosen by Puccini as the setting for the first act of his opera, Tosca.

Buon Anno e Tanti Auguri per 2016 (Happy New Year and best wishes for 2016) from all at Italy On This Day!

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Pope John Paul II’s prison visit

Pope came face to face with his would be killer

Pope John Paul II visited Rebibbia prison on the outskirts of Rome on this day in 1983 to forgive formally the man who had tried to assassinate him.

Pope John Paul II

Two years previously the Pope had been shot and critically wounded in St Peter’s Square by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish member of a fascist group known as Grey Wolves.

John Paul II had been rushed unconscious to hospital with bullet wounds to the abdomen, colon and small intestine and had to have five hours of surgery to repair the damage.

Agca was caught and restrained by bystanders until the police arrived. He was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment.

John Paul II visited Agca on 27 December 1983 in prison in Rebibbia, a suburb on the north eastern edge of Rome.

They spoke privately for about 20 minutes and afterwards the Pope said he had pardoned his would be killer.

Agca had previously escaped from a Turkish prison where he had been serving a sentence for murdering a journalist. He was deported to Turkey at the end of his jail sentence in Italy and went on to serve another ten years in prison.

On 27 December 2014, 33 years after the shooting, Agca came to the Vatican in Rome to lay white roses on Pope John Paul II’s tomb.

Pope John Paul II had died in April 2005 at the age of 84 in his private rooms in the Vatican.  He had been taken ill in February of the same year and underwent a tracheotomy. He was released from hospital but in late March developed an infection that turned into septic shock, a severe condition from which he never recovered.

The scene of the attempted assassination of
John Paul II in St Peter's Square, Rome

Travel tip:

St Peter’s Square in front of the Basilica was designed by Bernini to provide a large space where the faithful, from all over the world, could gather together. It is filled with pilgrims and visitors to Rome on Easter Sunday, Christmas Day and other important occasions when the Pope appears to address the crowd.

Travel tip:

Pope John Paul II’s tomb is on the north side of an area called the Vatican Grottoes, less than 100 feet from the tomb of Saint Peter. The grottoes are beneath the floor of St Peter’s Basilica and house the tombs of many dead popes.

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