Easter customs vary across Italy, from Calabria’s penitential processions to Florence’s fireworks. Italian American families have continued and adapted some of these observances, including the foods prepared for Easter.

In 2026, Easter Sunday falls on April 5. For families who observe it, the surrounding days may include Palm Sunday blessings, Holy Week services, and Easter Monday outings.

Customs differ between regions and between families. Taranto’s processions and Florence’s fireworks show that variety; Easter recipes offer another way to trace local traditions and their adaptations in Italian America.

This is the story of how Italy does Easter — region by region, course by course — and how those traditions survive in Italian American homes today.

Palm Sunday: Olive Branches

Holy Week opens on Domenica delle Palme — Palm Sunday — which in 2026 falls on March 29. While much of the Christian world carries palm fronds to commemorate Christ's entry into Jerusalem, Italians overwhelmingly favor olive branches instead. Blessed olive branches are associated with peace.

Families attend morning Mass carrying sprigs of olive, which the priest blesses and sprinkles with holy water. These blessed branches are then brought home and tucked behind crucifixes, above doorways, or beside family photographs — small acts of devotion that mark the house as spiritually prepared for the week ahead. In many households, the previous year's dried olive branches are burned, their ashes saved for the following year's Ash Wednesday.

At the Vatican, the Pope leads an enormous open-air Mass in St. Peter's Square, blessing palm branches before tens of thousands of pilgrims. But in the villages of the Apennines or the hillside towns of Sicily, the scene is quieter and more intimate — a parish priest, a stone church, a congregation that has gathered in this same space for generations.

Good Friday Processions

Good Friday commemorates the Crucifixion. In many Italian communities, processions and periods of silence form part of the observance.

In the Roman Catholic liturgy, bells traditionally fall silent after the Gloria at Holy Thursday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper and return during the Gloria at the Easter Vigil. A Vatican Observatory account by a parish priest describes this practice; local bell-ringing arrangements can differ.

Taranto: The Swaying Penitents of Puglia

In Taranto, the Holy Week processions are among the most intense in all of southern Italy. Beginning on Holy Thursday evening, members of ancient confraternite — lay brotherhoods whose origins stretch back to the Middle Ages — emerge in white robes and pointed hoods, symbols of penance that predate any modern association. They carry massive wooden statues depicting scenes from the Passion through the narrow streets of the old city.

Participants maintain the slow, swaying nazzicata for hours, accompanied by funeral marches as onlookers watch in silence.

Enna: Sicily's Torchlit Mountains

In the hilltop city of Enna, at the geographic center of Sicily, Holy Week is a spectacle that dominates the entire community. The processions here date back centuries and involve hooded confraternity members carrying ornate statues through streets lit only by torchlight. Sacred chants accompany the procession through Enna’s narrow streets.

The Via Crucis at the Colosseum

In Rome, the Pope leads the Via Crucis — the Way of the Cross — at the Colosseum on Good Friday evening. The torchlit procession around the ancient amphitheater, with meditations at each of the fourteen stations, is watched by millions worldwide.

Chieti: One of Italy's Oldest Processions

In the Abruzzo city of Chieti, the Good Friday Miserere procession is considered one of the oldest in Italy, with roots stretching into the Middle Ages. As evening falls, hundreds of singers fill the historic center with the solemn notes of the Miserere, their voices echoing off stone facades as the procession moves through the darkened streets.

Calabria’s Vattienti

Nocera Terinese’s Vattienti observance includes ritual self-flagellation.

In Nocera Terinese, a small town in the Calabrian province of Catanzaro, Holy Saturday brings the Vattienti — the flagellants. Men dressed in black shirts and shorts process through the streets alongside the statue of the Madonna Addolorata (Our Lady of Sorrows), striking their bare legs with two ritual instruments: the rosa, a smooth piece of cork used to prepare the skin, and the cardo, a piece of cork embedded with thirteen shards of glass representing Christ and the twelve apostles.

The blood flows freely. It marks the cobblestones, the walls of churches, the doorsteps of homes. The earliest written accounts of this practice date to the seventeenth century, though oral tradition places it much earlier. The ritual exists in a similar form in nearby Verbicaro as well.

Participants describe the practice as an offering to the Virgin Mary. The ethnographic study cited below explores how they understand this act of devotion.

Florence's Explosion: The Scoppio del Carro

The Scoppio del Carro — the Explosion of the Cart — is one of Italy's most spectacular Easter traditions, a ritual whose origins reach back to the First Crusade. According to tradition, a Florentine knight named Pazzino de' Pazzi was the first man to scale the walls of Jerusalem in 1099. As a reward for his bravery, he received three flint stones from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which he carried back to Florence. Those stones — still preserved today in the Church of Santi Apostoli — became the source of a sacred fire that was struck each Easter and distributed throughout the city.

Over centuries, the ritual evolved into the extraordinary ceremony seen today. On Easter morning, a towering antique cart called the Brindellone — standing roughly nine meters tall, weighing four tonnes, and in continuous use for over five hundred years — is pulled through the streets of Florence by white Chianina oxen decorated with garlands of spring flowers. An escort of 150 people in fifteenth-century costume — soldiers, musicians, flag-throwers — accompanies the cart to the Piazza del Duomo.

Inside the cathedral, during Easter Mass, the Archbishop of Florence uses the ancient flints to light a fuse attached to the colombina — a mechanical dove symbolizing the Holy Spirit. The dove-shaped rocket then travels along a wire stretching the length of the cathedral nave, shoots out the doors, and strikes the cart in the piazza, igniting a spectacular cascade of fireworks.

If the colombina completes its journey and returns safely to the altar, tradition holds that Florence will enjoy a year of good fortune. Florentines remember that the dove failed its mission in 1966 — the year of the catastrophic Arno River flood that devastated the city.

Sulmona's Running Madonna

In the Abruzzo town of Sulmona, Easter Sunday brings one of Italy's most joyful and theatrical moments: La Madonna che Scappa in Piazza — the Madonna who runs in the square.

The ceremony re-enacts the moment the Virgin Mary learns of her son's resurrection. A statue of the Madonna, draped in black mourning garments, is carried slowly into the main piazza, where a statue of the risen Christ awaits. At the climactic moment, the Madonna's black cloak is released, revealing a green dress beneath. The statue is then carried at a sprint across the piazza toward the risen Christ, accompanied by the release of white doves, the ringing of bells, and the explosive cheers of the crowd. Fireworks erupt. Confetti fills the air. After a week of mourning, the town erupts in unconstrained joy.

Pasquetta: Easter Monday Outings

Pasquetta, or Easter Monday, is a national holiday in Italy. Many people spend it with friends or family outdoors, often bringing leftovers from Easter lunch.

In Emilia-Romagna, the classic Pasquetta outing in Bologna follows the ancient Sentiero dei Bregoli, a trail that winds through the hills from Casalecchio di Reno to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca, with a packed lunch enjoyed along the way.

The Easter Table: A Region-by-Region Feast

Easter meals vary by region and household. Lamb, colomba, and chocolate eggs are among the foods associated with the holiday.

Foods Found Across Regions

Certain foods appear on Italian Easter tables from the Alps to Sicily. Lamb (agnello) is the centerpiece — roasted with rosemary, garlic, and potatoes, it symbolizes sacrifice and renewal. Colomba di Pasqua, the dove-shaped sweet bread topped with almonds and pearl sugar, is the Easter counterpart to Christmas's panettone. And chocolate eggs — not the small kind, but enormous, elaborately wrapped confections containing a sorpresa (surprise gift) inside — are also associated with the holiday.

The Northern Table

In Bologna and across Emilia-Romagna, Easter lunch means lasagna — the rich, layered Bolognese version with spinach pasta, ragù, and béchamel. Tortellini in brodo often appears alongside it. The meal may end with torta di riso, a rice cake flavored with amaretto or alchermes. In the Apennine foothills above Bologna, families bake pagnotta pasquale, a traditional Easter bread loaf eaten with blessed hard-boiled eggs and slices of local salami on Easter morning.

The Southern Table

Naples contributes two of Easter's most iconic dishes. Casatiello Napoletano is a stuffed bread ring packed with salami, prosciutto, pancetta, mortadella, provolone, and pecorino, with whole hard-boiled eggs baked into the top — a bread so dense with cured meat and cheese that a single slice could constitute a meal. Pastiera Napoletana is its sweet counterpart — a ricotta and wheat berry pie scented with orange blossom water that families begin preparing days in advance.

From the broader south comes pizza rustica (also called pizzagaina or pizza chiena), a savory pie layered with ricotta, eggs, ham, salami, and mozzarella, encased in a golden crust. This is the dish that perhaps more than any other has survived the Atlantic crossing intact — Italian American families from Philadelphia to Providence still bake pizza rustica every Easter, often from recipes that have been handed down through four or five generations.

The Sicilian Table

Sicily adds cassata, the elaborate ricotta sponge cake covered in marzipan and candied fruit, to the Easter dessert canon. The island's Easter tables also feature lamb prepared in distinctly local ways — braised with artichokes, roasted with wild fennel, or simmered in a sauce of tomatoes and olives.

Good Friday's Kitchen: The Feast of Fasting

For Latin Catholics in the United States, Good Friday and Ash Wednesday are days of fasting and abstinence, and Fridays of Lent are days of abstinence, subject to the applicable age rules and exemptions. See the USCCB guidance on fasting and abstinence. Across Italy, families prepare elaborate fish dinners — baccalà (salt cod) prepared a dozen different ways, marinated anchovies, fried calamari, seafood risotto, pasta with clams. In Bologna, the tradition calls for fresh fish from the Adriatic, often marinated with orange juice or fennel seeds before cooking.

Family recipes may make these meals memorable even within the observance’s dietary restrictions.

The Blessing of the Basket

One of the most enduring Easter traditions — and one that has survived particularly well in Italian American communities — is the benedizione di Pasqua, the blessing of Easter foods. On Holy Saturday, families assemble baskets filled with the foods that will be served at the Easter feast: bread, cheese, eggs, salami, wine, sometimes a small colomba. The baskets are brought to the parish church, where the priest blesses them with holy water.

The practice carries deep significance. After forty days of Lenten sacrifice, the blessed food represents the return of abundance and the sanctification of earthly pleasures. In many Italian American households, older generations still observe this tradition, carrying their baskets to church just as their grandparents did in Calabria or Campania or Abruzzo.

How Italian Americans Keep Easter Alive

Families have carried Easter recipes and religious customs to the United States and adapted them across generations. Handwritten recipes, parish observances, and newer family activities can all form part of that history. Ask relatives which customs they remember and how those customs have changed.

The Deeper Meaning

Easter traditions can connect families with particular places and earlier generations. Their meaning also changes as people adapt recipes, join a different parish, or begin customs of their own. Recording those changes helps preserve a more accurate family history.

Buona Pasqua from the Alghini Institute for Italian Americans. If your family preserves an Easter tradition — a recipe, a ritual, a story passed down through generations — we want to hear it. Share your story with us at info@italianamericans.com or tag us on social media with #ItalianAmericanEaster.

Sources and Further Reading:

  • Calabria Straordinaria Tourism: Vattienti of Nocera Terinese
  • FeelFlorence / Duomo di Firenze: Official documentation of the Scoppio del Carro ceremony
  • Emilia Romagna Tourism: Regional Easter food traditions and the Bregoli trail
  • Italia.it: National tourism guide to Holy Week celebrations across Italian regions
  • Ethnographic research: Loi, M. (2018). "De-orientalising Ritual Blood: Calabria's Vattienti, a Case Study." Annali di Ca' Foscari, Serie orientale, 54.