Don’t let it muddle you... Surviving Florence: the basics
Ferragosto
[
Maddalena Delli]
If you happen to be in Florence - or almost anywhere else in Italy for that matter - in August and especially in the week across mid-August, you can find yourself at a loss when you start coming across and endless succession of closed shops with a colorful chiuso per ferie shutdown sign. How can it be? Why should they all shut shop and desert the city at the same time? Well, Ferragosto has been a holiday here since Roman times, when it was called "feriae Augusti” in honor of the Emperor Augustus. In later times August 15th become a Christian festivity to celebrate the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. More recently, in the 1960s and 1970s, when most of the population was employed in big factories, August became the time of the year when manufacturing plants closed down to allow workers time for their paid yearly holiday. Families started taking the habit of going for a seaside vacation or travel back to their native towns and rejoin their families, and August became everybody's time to go on holiday. Years on the habit has become so well rooted that it doesn't wear out, and even those who don't actually go away will at least take a day trip to the seaside or go for a picnic in the country on August 15th.
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