Buon Anno!

Happy New Year!

Last night we went to Piazza Maggiore, Bologna's main piazza, to see the burning of "Il Vecchione," - literally "the old one," a gigantic wooden statue burned at midnight in effigy of the old year. Each year it's designed by a different artist, and this year's resembled a wolf, although we're not sure that's what it really was.


During the hour leading up to midnight, there was an acrobatics and dance show in the piazza, including fire-throwers and a tight-rope walker that walked high above the crowd, diagonally across the piazza.

Tight-rope walker with Il Vecchione

And at midnight, they lit it on fire!

Firemen were close on hand in case Il Vecchione got out of control

It was crowded and cold, but it was a very unique and exciting experience to be in an Italian piazza at midnight on New Year's Eve, to countdown in Italian, and to see the crowd pop open champagne bottles and shout in Italian at midnight. When the statue had been burning for about ten minutes, the crowd pushed the metal barriers forward, and began dancing in front of the burning statue. There were firecrackers, fireworks, and even some confetti to welcome in the new year.

The fiery piazza after midnight

This morning we woke up to a wonderful surprise - snow! In the afternoon we climbed up to San Luca, the church up on a hill overlooking Bologna. There are 3.5 km of porticos leading up to the church, which is 300 meters above ground, so it's quite an uphill climb. That said, the view from the top, which overlooks the Bolognese hills, is fantastic, made even more breathtaking today by the snow. Even though we didn't plan to, we arrived just in time to see the sunset. A perfect New Year's Day.

Porticos leading up to San Luca