Lots of people prefer to holiday outside of the peak tourism months and May is a great time to plan a trip to Italy as the real tourist crowds have yet to descend but the temperatures have begun to get rise in earnest, prices for flights and accommodation remain a little lower, and, as the season is just about to turn, you get the best of both spring blooms and beauty and summer fun. A luxury villa in Sicily, in particular, is perfect for a May getaway and if you are spending time in Sicily during the third week of the month there is one town that you should definitely visit, Noto.
Noto is a beautiful town with cinematic good looks that features UNESCO-awarded Baroque architectural gems and very pretty and typical winding little streets. In May, it becomes even more beautiful when the annual Infiorata di Noto festival takes place and the scent of flowers becomes heavy in the air. Infiorata happens in cities all over Italy in May and June and is a festival of floral art displays, with works of art created from flower petals to adorn city streets and historic buildings, but the Infiorata celebration in Noto is the most famous of all.
Noto is a beautiful town with cinematic good looks that features UNESCO-awarded Baroque architectural gems and very pretty and typical winding little streets. In May, it becomes even more beautiful when the annual Infiorata di Noto festival takes place and the scent of flowers becomes heavy in the air. Infiorata happens in cities all over Italy in May and June and is a festival of floral art displays, with works of art created from flower petals to adorn city streets and historic buildings, but the Infiorata celebration in Noto is the most famous of all.
While the festival has roots in historic events in Sicily under Roman rule hundreds of years ago, the modern iteration of the event was born in Noto in 1980, after the meeting of the flower artists from the town of Genzano in Rome in which this floral pictorial technique had been invented and locals of Noto who were similarly talented with their hands and learned the art form. The Infiorata festival is now one of the most meaningful and famous feasts of Sicily and has become bigger and better over the years, with more and more artists taking part in creating the large-scale floral compositions that blanket the elegant Via Corrado Nicolaci. While there are other floral displays to be found around the city (in courtyards, cloisters, city streets, squares, and more), the Via Corrado Nicolaci piece is the largest and most impressive, stretching 122 meters long and 7 meters wide, in a sweeping path that is topped by the elegant Church of Montevergine. The designs are first sketched and then marked out on the ground before the pattern is then recreated on top in flowers. When the floral mural is created, a pathway on each side is marked out and a strip down the remainder of the middle of the road becomes one giant work of art, usually housing around 16 different scenes. Each year, the works are created around that edition's decided theme with a wide range of topics having been chosen throughout the years from religious subjects to mythological subjects to popular culture and more.
The 2019 edition of Infiorata di Noto was based on the theme of China and the floral mural on Via Corrado Nicolaci that year depicted various different kinds of Chinese stories, motifs, and emblems while the 2020 edition was, understandably, a rather special and unusual one. A good deal smaller in scale, it occupied only a part of Via Corrado Nicolaci this year, rather than its entire length, and comprised of just four medallions dedicated to Sicily that were arranged between the branches of a large tree, the Tree of Life. Though so many of the major annual events and celebrations of Italy had to be cancelled this year, the Syracusan municipality decided to continue with the Infiorata di Noto, even if the normal crowds could not freely visit and wander among the wonderful floral works. Instead, locals could see them through images and videos and see that, “beauty is stronger than fear,” and that beauty is not cancelled, art is not cancelled. It symbolised the hope and rebirth of spring despite the difficult and unprecedented times that the people of Noto, and that the whole world, found themselves in.
Hopefully, the 2021 edition (due to take place from Friday the 14th of 2021 until Sunday the 16th of May 2021) of the Infiorata di Noto will be able to take place in slightly less trying times and can be freely enjoyed once more by both locals and visitors alike. No matter what, however, this beloved festival clearly isn't going anywhere and this beautiful tradition is one that Noto means to maintain moving forward. So, whether it is spring 2021 or some other time in the future, if you have always wanted to visit Sicily, have had it on your bucket list, and dream of planning a trip, we hope you get to make it happen. And, if you happen to have found a luxury villa in Sicily and are there on the third week of May, make sure you go and take in this incredible display for yourself as it is truly magical and needs to be experienced in person. In addition to the main floral showcases (which are created and then last through the next day until sunset), over the three days of the festival, the city also schedules lots of other fun events to be enjoyed in the evenings such as exhibits, workshops, various forms of entertainment for kids, tastings, tours through the historic centre and the surrounding area, open churches, open nights at local museums, and the Baroque Procession, which involves figures in period costume, flag-wavers, and musicians, who all parade colourfully through the streets of the historic centre of town.
Hopefully, the 2021 edition (due to take place from Friday the 14th of 2021 until Sunday the 16th of May 2021) of the Infiorata di Noto will be able to take place in slightly less trying times and can be freely enjoyed once more by both locals and visitors alike. No matter what, however, this beloved festival clearly isn't going anywhere and this beautiful tradition is one that Noto means to maintain moving forward. So, whether it is spring 2021 or some other time in the future, if you have always wanted to visit Sicily, have had it on your bucket list, and dream of planning a trip, we hope you get to make it happen. And, if you happen to have found a luxury villa in Sicily and are there on the third week of May, make sure you go and take in this incredible display for yourself as it is truly magical and needs to be experienced in person. In addition to the main floral showcases (which are created and then last through the next day until sunset), over the three days of the festival, the city also schedules lots of other fun events to be enjoyed in the evenings such as exhibits, workshops, various forms of entertainment for kids, tastings, tours through the historic centre and the surrounding area, open churches, open nights at local museums, and the Baroque Procession, which involves figures in period costume, flag-wavers, and musicians, who all parade colourfully through the streets of the historic centre of town.
