There is a beautiful Italian town in Umbria that shows off Roman and Medieval architecture. It is a town with an amazing community spirit and closeness. Once a year people from neighbouring towns and villages come to celebrate a religious flower festival. This is Spello Flower Festival.
I think Wiki describes it best – “Spello’s Infiorate is a manifestation which takes place every year in the small Umbrian town of Spello (Italy) on the occasion of the Corpus Domini feast, on the ninth Sunday after Easter. On that night, almost a thousand people work incessantly to create carpets and pictures made of flowers along the narrow town’s streets. The floral creations cover streets throughout the historical centre in preparation to the passage of the Blessed Sacrament carried in procession by the bishop on Sunday morning. The result is a unique one-mile-long path of beautiful floral creations with an explosion of colours and scents.”
Through my friend Max Brunelli, I was lucky enough to be a volunteer for one of the teams who spend the week before creating the beautiful floral carpets. It is not just the week before though that is involved in this process. The flowers are planted in fields and then they need to be picked so therefore it is a year-long process. It was an amazing event and I will never forget how welcoming the Spello community was to have an Australian in their village.
You can read more about the Spello Infiorate here and here.