If you mention the word “Carnevale” in Italy, most people’s first thought is of Venice, with an elegant crowd dressed in beautiful 18th-century costumes strolling through piazza San Marco. But it is on the other side of the Italian peninsula, in Viareggio, adjacent to Tuscany’s Tyrrhenian Sea, that we find the oldest continuously operating Carnevale celebrations in all of Italy.

Historically, Carnevale is the final hurrah before the restrictions of Lent begin on Ash Wednesday (on February 22 this year). The origins of Viareggio Carnevale date back to 1873, but it was in the 1920s that the celebrations, as we know them today, truly came into being.