Venice Carnival 2010 / 6th - 16th Feb. 2010.

The Carnival of Venice (Italian: Carnevale di Venezia) is an annual festival, held in Venice, Italy



the Carnival in Venice was supposedly first recorded in 1296, when the Senate of the Republic issued an edict declaring the day before Lent as a public holiday. Much as in other cities, Medieval and Renaissance Venetians appear to have celebrated Carnival in several guises. On the one hand, it was an official festival, for the most part staged in Piazza San Marco, the Piazzetta, in the courtyard of the Ducal Palace, or out in the Bacino of San Marco – the basin adjoining the Molo. These events, especially during and after the sixteenth century, celebrated the founding and governing myths of the state – its tranquility, durability, prosperity, fairness, and piety. Some of these official festivities were violent – oxen and pigs were let loose in the Palace courtyard and then slaughtered – but they still conveyed the overarching theme of civic unity. On the other hand, a good deal of popular energy during Carnival was directed into group rivalries, between parishes or between large geographic factions that divided the city. These could be extremely violent at times, involving bull fights, the running of oxen or pigs down the streets, or mass brawls with sticks or fists, often on bridges.

By the seventeenth century the Carnival of Venice, like that of Rome, had become a regular attraction for tourists from Northern Europe – especially the so-called Grand Tourists: young aristocratic men who spent a year or more visiting the cultural attractions of Italy. (ref from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_of_Venice)