A Tiny Village in Southern Italy Makes the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Look Pretty Lame

The remote little inland town of Putignano has been putting on Carnivale parades since 1394. It's hard to get there & hard to find a way out, but a dazzling, creative extravaganza. Every year they choose a different theme --this year's is diversity/differences in the people of the world. Putignano's specialty is gigantic paper mache & mechanical floats of amazing complexity & a kind of gross extremism. 

Thousands of people seem to suddenly materialize in what was a sleepy nowheresville.

                                    Center of town at 1 pm

                                   Center of town at 8 pm

When things get jumping & the massive floats start heading down the street, it is LOUD. Marching bands compete with a booming sound system & DJ on each float. Drums pound. Kids scream in terror/delight. 

                                    Banner proclaiming theme of parade

Leonardo da Vince & Mona Lisa, amusing the crowd while waiting for the floats

                Dancing people in artists' smocks & berets...a popular choice of costume

                 Costumes representing many countries, in keeping with the theme

Their representation of America -- dancing cowgirls...they actually sang the Star Spangled Banner, this tiny speck of a village so far away from sprawling America...surprising & touching

          This person roamed through the crowd, wagging his giant tongue lewdly

                                     Lots of hoop skirts

                                               And acrobats

Then the floats start to appear:

                 The first is Death & is aptly escorted by a group of dancing skeletons 

                This thing is monstrous coming down the street, pulled by a tractor

When this creature is looming heavily over your head, three stories high, you have you lean your head all the back as far as it will go to look up at it & it's genuinely terrifying.

I took this before it got dark, when I saw him parked on a back street, waiting. Good for showing details. This is Death holding a lantern, escorting refugees in a boat.

Every fingernail & eyelash & tooth is made from paper mache

This second float is completely wacky...a relief after Dr. Death

This is Gulliver, struggling with countless tiny people who are trying to tie him down. This symbolizes the struggle of the world's people to be free.

               Look at the facial expressions of each little person...so unique

                  Taken earlier

                                               An explosion of little people!

                                  This one was hard to understand 

                         Maybe it symbolizes despots around the world...there's Hitler

                           I don't know who that guy with the life ring is

     That yellow-green creature was labeled "al-Qaeda" & you can see a reference to terrorism

Bunny ears in foreground; scary guy coming down street in background

                  Very huge & scary 

          Taken earlier in day...you can see his size compared with people milling around

                     He makes the balconies on that building look like toys

      This guy is the best & worst of human nature all in one -- Hitler & Charlie Chaplin

 He came with his own team of dancing Hitlers...that was a startling sight

One side of him is "The Little Tramp" & the other side is Hitler in uniform

                                                    Gas mask

                                              Prisoners

I'm sure there are many traditional references I didn't understand

                           But the size & artistry of these is boggling to see

An Italian woman whose friend is an artist working on one of these floats told me that it takes 10 people 4 months to make one float.

      When Carnivale is over they take them all apart & start from scratch the following year

                  Stories that are told in word & image, generation after generation

Little Villages Are Italy's Rural Treasures

Little village 1:  Trani by the sea

                                                    How tropical!

                              Do my eyes deceive me???     F L O W E R S!

                         The Adriatic Sea is blue, blue, blue even in January

                                                Boats on a glass sea

            Shrimp so fresh they jump & twitch & threaten to leap out onto the sidewalk

                                   Giant octopus staring at me with many eyes

Little village 2: Alberobello, land of hobbits & gnomes & smurfs

In the 15th century, a wealthy landowner wanted to develop the rich land in this part of the Puglia region of Italy. But he didn't want to pay taxes to the Kingsom of Naples. So he constructed a village of distinctive little houses called trulli, using a prehistoric mortarless building technique. A trullo is a small dwelling built from the local limestone, with dry-stone walls and a characteristic conical roof. Since these were impermanent, they were not considered houses & therefore escaped taxation. But they were so well & cleverly built that they were permanent & now comprise a large part of this unusual village.

                                 Olive groves on the way to Alberobello

                             Vineyards wear their winter clothes

                      The trulli huddle together like bad children in dunce caps

                         They are all white in the Mediterranean sun

                 One family lives in each trullo; signs & symbols decorate the roofs

The streets are narrow & winding & oddly clear of signs of life. Maybe the hobbits don't come out when tourists are around.

         This standoffish cat is not all that impressed with the unusual nature of his home

                                                Aren't they adorable?

Many are set up for tourists...olive oil, wine, & lots of tiny souvenir trulli houses

                                      Roof silhouettes against the noon sky