Happy New Year! But Veneto

Like the Chinese and other millennial nations, the Venetians have a separate New Year's Eve, which is celebrated on the first of March . The Venetian New Year on March 1st has its roots in Indo-European history, so let's talk about further 3000 years ago, and it was also adopted by the Romans, later by the Republic of Venice, and was legally suppressed with the French Revolution. from the 2002 thanks to “Bepin” Giuseppe Segato, Venetian historian and patriot,and to the Committee for the beautiful Venetian Customs which he founded and animated together with me (Loris Palmerini), New Year's Eve in Veneto is experiencing a slow but inexorable rebirth, which is also identity-forming. Not the case “Bepin” he dedicated his last years to this activity, he was convinced that the “Dog of the Year” is an unattainable and indelible symbol of our millenary specificity.

There are numerous events organized in the Venice between New Year and many i “How Marso”.

every year, except the 2020, the Committee of Fine Venetian Customs has organized a New Year's Eve dinner for the first of March or in the days around.

E’ a moment of aggregation to celebrate Venetian culture, with poems in the Venetian language, jokes and songs, and perhaps a lottery with prizes collected from household items no longer used.

Lots of good home-style eating of typical Venetian cuisine, the wine, without many frills and at an affordable price.

The story of awakening : the actual celebration of the Venetian New Year is 1 March, fallen into oblivion until 2000, it was revitalized based on an idea by Bepin Segato, and together he and I began organizing events from 2003. The first initiative was to have Mayor Gentilini deliver our roses (The bocoli) to all the women present in the Treviso lodge, as a custom of Venice. in 2004 instead we celebrated with a dinner/picnic under the Campanile of San Marco, arriving there by gondola like Dogi, and dining with typical products, and then return through the streets and squares beating the drums and shouting “Batimarso!”.

Every year we celebrated our culture, with dinners and tourist trips, enhancing the event also in a commercial capacity to provide work for restaurateurs in a normally dead period (it often falls during carnival, but sometimes in Lent). E’ a moment of valorization of our culture and identity. Neither Bepin Segato nor I have ever thought of New Year's Eve as a moment of insult to other people's culture. Instead, there were excesses from the usual troublemakers , and political exploitations that have nothing to do with this event.

It must be an opportunity to be together and celebrate a tradition by eating well and having fun.

For reservations and registrations, visit the website Venetian customs