Festa dei Gigli (Nola)
28 June 2026 · movable holiday — The lily dances on shoulders – happy feast, Nola!
The Festa dei Gigli (Feast of the Lilies) takes place every year in Nola, near Naples, on the Sunday after 22 June. It honours Saint Paulinus of Nola, the city's bishop, whose feast day is 22 June. According to tradition, the townspeople welcomed him with lilies when he returned to the city. Today the gigli are eight tall wooden obelisk-towers decorated with ornaments, accompanied by a ship. Each tower is carried on the shoulders of many bearers, while a band on top sets the rhythm, so the heavy structure seems to dance through the streets. Each tower is linked to a traditional trade or guild of the town. The feast is part of the UNESCO-listed tradition of large shoulder-borne processional structures, inscribed on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2013. It falls a few days after the summer solstice, when nights are shortest and the sky stays light late into the evening.
Flying across the sky: An ethereal, bluish-silver star figure made of bright dots and fine lines, shaped like a tall slender obelisk-tower that sways in rhythm like a constellation drifting across the night sky
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