Italy
In Italy Mardi Gras is not the main day of Carnival, since the Carnival lasts four more days, ending on the Saturday after Ash Wednesday, because of the Ambrosian rite. The last day of Carnival, therefore, is the "Sabato grasso" (Shrove or Fat Saturday).
Italy is the birthplace of Carnival celebrations, having its origins in the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia. The Italian version of the festival is spelled Carnevale.
Read more about this topic: Mardi Gras
Famous quotes containing the word italy:
“the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
—Orson Welles (1915–84)
“For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery—back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)