Polenta is loved by everybody…this dish has on the table of Italian families for generations!!

Polenta is a corn meal mush, but is more than that! It’s the staple food of the North of Italy, where after pasta, is one of the favourite dishes. It can be served in innumerable ways: as a first course, baked, with stews, or even as a bread substitute.

For citizens of Rocca di Papa , a small village near Rome, Polenta is too a unique and complete food, it is added to the usual simple condiments (with tomato sauce, sausages, meat, cheese etc), the condiments that the old farmers use to this day  to create to create dishes that satisfied the gourmets.

And it is in Rocca di Papa for the second year that will be a special gastronomic event in occasion of Valentine’s Day: “La Polenta degli Innamorati” ( The polenta of Lovers). The event will be surrounded by so many moments of entertainment with music and with “Il bacio più lungo” (The longest kiss), all the couples attending this event are invited, it consists in a kiss of mass to enter on the Guinness world record as the major kiss of mass ever!

La Polenta degli Innnamorati will be held on the occasion of Valentine’s Day, Frebruary 14 and February 15 at the center of Rocca di Papa, one of the many little towns that can be explored from Rome using as a base a well-located hotel like Hotel Des Artistes or Yes Hotel.

Ilaria, born and bred Venetian, introduces us to this peculiar Italian tradition.

Children are fascinated and a little bit frightened by this enigmatic, funny eerie character whose   existence sink its roots into the ground of paganism.

In days of yore , on the twelfth night after the Christmas day (the 25^th of December), day of the winter solstice, people used to celebrate death and rebirth of nature through the pagan figure of “ Mother Nature”.

The night of the 6^th of January , tired tired after spending all her energy during the year, she appeared in the shape of an old and benevolent witch  who flew through the sky on a broom giving away gifts and candy to everybody. By now completely dried, Mother Nature was ready to be burned like a branch , to be able to born again from her own ashes as youthful Nature.

Like others traditions in Italy ( Christmas itself for example) the originary pagan meaning of epiphany (term deriving from greek that means “manifestation”, “appearance” , implied of divinity , used from the Christian tradition to nominate the first Jesus Christ’s manifestation) has been modified during years becoming as we know nowadays. In Italian, the name “epifania” (- epiphany ) itself transformed into “bifanìa” and than again into “befanìa” , the word then changed  once and for all into “befana”, and designates now  the old benevolent witch .

The “befana” is still pictured as the old mother natured described above, and in the rural tradition people used to prepare a puppet with her shape and burn it the night between the 5^th and the 6^th of January as a rite of purification ( the Italian movie of 1973 “Amarcord” by Federico Fellini shows this rite in the first scene ).

So if you’re walking through fancy open-markets during Xmas time, don’t be astonished to see many little puppets shaped as an old smiling witch on a broom..

You’ll also see a lot of colourful Christmas socks : according to the tradition children must hang them on a wall so that they can be filled with candies, chocolate or toys by the Befana. Children must be careful anyway: if they haven’t been good boys during the year, the “befana” will bring them peaces of coa insteadl!

This festivity is the last afterNew year’s day, that’s why here we call “epiphany” the festivity that all festivities takes away : “ L’epifania tutte le feste porta via”.

Make a reservation today at Yes Hotel or Hotel Des Artistes and discover Italy and all its traditions in person!