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Giuliana Poli

Giuliana is a journalist and a researcher in cultural anthropology. She writes about traditions and monographs and texts on works of art. She is also an analyst and expert in iconography and iconology of works of art, semantic research of the language of art and words. She also deals with strategic communication.

The feast of Our Lady of the Sterpeto and St. Ruggero, after a two-year pandemic, returns to Barletta, Apulia. A millennial feast that fideistically the city's faithful repeat every year in July with heartfelt participation. The importance that the patronal feast in honor of its patron saints has always had has contributed to the solidarity of huma...

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Montefiore dell'Aso, a typical medieval-style village of the Marche hinterland, is well preserved: notable stretches of walls equipped with gates and six towers dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries remain. A visit offers tourists pleasant views and valuable evidence of the historical and artistic past of the Italian Renaissance. This beautifu...

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The month of May is dedicated to Mary. Especially in Etruria, in the Lazio region, archaic festivals of pagan origin follow one another. A particularly suggestive feast, which at times fills the eyes with tears for its intensity, is certainly the Barabbata on May 14th. It is celebrated at the church of Santa Maria del Monte in Marta, a village alon...

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On Easter Sunday, Lent, the long period of fasting, is broken and sweets in the shape of a dove and an egg are distributed. The egg, symbol of life that is renewed and auspicious of fertility, is connected to the meaning of Easter as the feast of spring and the awakening of nature. The egg is the most ancient and representative symbol of Easter, fe...

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One of the festivals that most represents the Italian Easter tradition is the "Procession of the Mysteries" in Trapani, Sicily, where there is an intense popular participation. Imagine a river of people standing for twenty hours in extreme silence as they watch the representation of the "Mysteries". This magical word is not to be considered as an i...

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The celebration of Carnevale (Carnival) is very important in Italy. Unfortunately with the passing of time, younger generations are losing the meaning of it, but despite everything, it is still a very important celebration, not only for the taste of dressing up but also for the culinary specialties, made of delicious sweets, such as ravioli with cr...

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January 17th is the feast day of a universal Saint: Saint Anthony Abbot, to whom the deepest tradition, the sacred fire, is linked. This is the meaning of the numerous bonfires that every year are lit on this day in the Italian and European countryside. The propitiatory fire of fertility, protective and purifying, a fire that belongs to the past tr...

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In the North of Italy, in the month of December, the most felt feast by the population is on the day 13 when we celebrate Santa Lucia, the shortest day of the year, date from which the light begins to reappear. In general the week venerated in the North is the one which starts from December 8th, feast of the Immaculate Conception to December 13th....

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In Montedinove, an ancient village along the Valle Dell'Aso in the Sibillini Mountains in the province of Ascoli Piceno, in the Marche Region, every year for the feast of the dead women are celebrated through the pink apple (la mela rosa) of the Sibillini Mountains. Many people gather to shop for typical products of the land and obviously this smal...

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In the Canto XXI of Paradise, 106-111, Dante Alighieri the supreme Italian poet, through the mouth of Pier Damiani describes the area located between the two coasts, Tyrrhenian and Adriatic in the middle of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, not far from Florence, “where there are mountains so high that the thunder falls much lower.” There is the top of...

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On September 8, in San Lorenzo in the valley of the Viterbo countryside, the rite of passage of the Madonna di Torano takes place. A legend that is very much felt in the area and a mystical place. It is located about 2 kilometers from the town and an asphalt road leads us to end up in the square where the church stands. The territory is rich in arc...

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Understanding today's traditions, festivals, ceremonies, religious recurrences, is not only a strictly individual knowledge or an intellectual enrichment, but it is above all understanding rituals and previous cultic activities. The whole sphere referring to anthropological-religious activities are nothing but that useful baggage of a deeper knowle...

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