Author: Vittoria Traverso / Source: Atlas Obscura
For a month each year, residents of San Biagio team up to build life-size structures made of local herbs, cereals, and bread. This monumental display is both centuries old and one of Italy’s most fantastical traditions: the Arches of Bread.
The festival’s origins trace back to the establishment of San Biagio Platani, a village in southwest Sicily, in feudal times. In the 17th century, Sicily was ruled by Philip IV of Spain, who incentivised the establishment of rural fiefs to meet the Spanish Empire’s growing demand for wheat. In 1635, local landowner Giovanni Battista Berardi bought a farming licence and charter for the pricey sum of 200 ounces and founded a new village called “Lands of San Biagio.”
Carmelo Navarra, a native San Biagese and artistic director of the Arches of Bread Festival, says that it was custom throughout the empire to welcome visiting authorities by constructing sumptuously decorated arches of triumph, such as the Baroque-style “Porta Nuova” in Palermo. But San Biagio was not Palermo. It was a rural town in the Sicilian hinterland. “What could a village of farmers offer to a visiting ruler?” says Navarra. “We lacked marble or tapestries, so we made arches of bread instead.”
Around the mid-18th century, when new rulers no longer demanded ornate displays of welcome, the people of San Biagio adapted the concept for a religious context. “During Easter, the ruler is Jesus Christ, who defeats death and comes back to meet the Madonna,” Navarra explains. As attested by a document kept in San Biagio’s main church, the Church declared that a portion of the village harvest should be used to make the “Arches of Bread.”
Every Easter since, residents have teamed up to build towering structures made entirely of locally sourced, organic ingredients. Men, women, and children build the arches with inlaid sugarcanes, willow, wild fennel, and asparagus under the supervision of local artisans. On Good Friday, they decorate the arches with rosemary, which symbolizes grief. And on the night before Easter Sunday, they replace the rosemary twigs with round-shaped bread loaves, chandeliers decorated with dates, mosaics of made of rice and legumes, and marmurata, a sweet, unleavened bread glazed with white icing.
Each ingredient takes on a symbolic meaning stemming from Christianity and local farming culture. “Bread symbolises farmers’ hard work,” says Navarra, “but it’s also the symbol of the body of Christ.” Decorations reflect this dual symbolism too: Motifs from local folk traditions—such as the sun, moon,…
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