| Carnival of Venice 2016 | | Print | |
A Carnival with the people of Venice, that will involve all the various cities of Venice and focus on the city’s arts, trades and traditions. This will be the general format of the first Carnival of Venice organised by the new artistic director of the event, Marco Maccapani. The 2016 edition, drafted today by Maccapani, will begin on 23 January and end, in line with tradition, on 9 February, Shrove Tuesday; but indeed, given the very early date on which it is scheduled to start, this year, Carnival will be a sort of extension of the Christmas celebrations, which start at the beginning of December and will also take place throughout the entire municipality.
A Carnival with the people of Venice, that will involve all the various cities of Venice and focus on the city’s arts, trades and traditions. This will be the general format of the first Carnival of Venice organised by the new artistic director of the event, Marco Maccapani. The 2016 edition, drafted today by Maccapani, will begin on 23 January and end, in line with tradition, on 9 February, Shrove Tuesday; but indeed, given the very early date on which it is scheduled to start, this year, Carnival will be a sort of extension of the Christmas celebrations, which start at the beginning of December and will also take place throughout the entire municipality.
“Carnival – the mayor began – is a cultural event that expresses the desire for freedom and that sense of sarcasm and irony that we have within us, but it is also an important economic event for our city and a time when the world trains its spotlights on us”. Remembering the first editions of the Venetian Carnival, in particular that of Scaparro, Brugnaro emphasised how truly popular the festival was back then and how many people would flock to Venice, also from the neighbouring villages; over time, the mayor noted, the event has become increasingly commercial, gradually distancing itself from the people.
One of the new events announced for this year is the absence of the large stage in Piazza San Marco, where it will instead be possible to see the city’s most ancient craftsmen work their trades; then there is the fun at the Arsenal and many more surprises to be announced later on. All this with a view to involving not only Venice but also the islands and its mainland, with an outlook on tourism focused more and more on providing experiences for those who visit the city and on simplifying as much as possible the procedures for the commercial operators who want to contribute, in various ways, to the event, as stressed by councillors Mar and Guzzon.
The mayor then made a point of thanking the new artistic director for the commitment undertaken: “He is an honest, self-made man with great skills and competences linked to the world of fashion, aesthetics and beauty. All things – stressed the mayor – which remind us of women, and this must return to being a woman-friendly city”.
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