Carnival Cakes: fritelle, chiacchiere and castagnole

Carnival is celebrated in winter, but its starting date varies every year. In order to calculate its exact date of beginning, it is necessary to count 40 days backwards from the beginning of Easter.

Hand-made fritelle filled with cream

The fritella, called fritoa in the local dialect, is the dessert par excellence of the Venetian Carnival. Its recipe is still preserved in a document kept in Rome, in the Casanatese library.

The fritelle have been eaten in Venice and in the territories starting from the second half of the 1300s. They were placed on a spit to be able to eat them while they were still hot and without greasing your hands.

Traditional Venetian frìtelle are prepared with a batter of flour, eggs, milk and sugar, raisins and pine nuts; they are then fried and served with a sprinkling of granulated sugar.

Venetian galani or chiacchiere

The chiacchiere better known as “galani” date back to Roman times too, when during the spring festivals they were cooked in pork fat using a mixture similar to that of the lasagna, which was then sugared.

They are thin strips of dough made up of a mixture of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, white wine, lemon zest and rum and then fried.

Castagnole

The castagnole are also a typical dessert that is eaten only at Carnival.

The main ingredients are eggs, sugar, flour and butter. After mixing them all together, balls the size of a walnut are formed, which are then fried in boiling oil. They are served with powdered sugar.

Venetian Carnival and its most famous masks

Venetian carnival goes back to the Roman Saturnalia and the Greek Dionisic cults, when once a year there were no restraints and just transgression was permitted.

In 1094 the Venetian Republic established the rules that had to be followed during this festival, but only in 1296 carnival became a public holiday.

It first took place in Campo Santo Stefano as it was celebrated on December 26th, the day of Saint Stephen and ended the day before Lent. It started again during the Ascension and then at the opening of the theaters in October.

A Carnival costume

Masks have always been an important feature of the Venetian carnival. It was not possible to recognize who was hiding behind them. Therefore, they served as a disguise and consequently through the numerous disguises a social leveling was reached.

The bauta

The bauta was a costume made of various pieces, including a completely white mask called larva, that allowed their wearers to hide their identity.

However, it allowed them to eat and drink, and it was especially used by those who entered the casinos to gamble.

The moretta

The moretta was a purely female mask, worn especially during parties and dances in the palaces. It was an oval mask that could not be tied with ribbons behind the woman’s nape, nor held in her hands with a stick. Pietro Longhi, a famous Venetian painter of the 1700s; represented it in his paintings. It seems that the mask was glued to the women’s face, but it wasn't like that. The mask hid a button on the inside that the lady held in her mouth so that in this way it was difficult for her to speak.

In the 1700s carnival turns out to be one of the most famous celebrations even among Europeans visiting Venice. There are numerous paintings that testify parties that were organized in the palaces, masquerades and games in the casinos and in the taverns.

A mask

Carnival was interrupted in the nineteenth-century during the French and Austrian domination but returned in the 1980s. It still takes place in Venice every year forty days before Easter.

Venetian towers

Saint Mark’s belltower

In Venice, you can still admire many bell towers. The most famous one is that of Saint Mark’s Square. It is called in dialect “el paron de casa” or the landlord as it is the tallest tower in the city. Built in the ninth century, St. Mark’s bell tower collapsed on itself on July 14th 1902. It was rebuilt “as it was and where it was” and inaugurated in 1912.

From this bell tower you have a wonderful view of the city, but let's not forget that the republic of Venice allowed Galileo Galilei to test his telescope from there in 1619 as the inscription says.

From Saint George’s bell tower you have a different perception of the city and a broader view of it.

Saint George’s bell tower

The bell towers had a fundamental function, they were watchtowers and lighthouses, like that on Murano island, still in operation or the square one on Torcello used as a watchtower.

Torcello square tower

Their bells were used to mark the daily life of the city, and it is from those bell towers that the first aerial view map of Venice was drawn in the 1500s by Jacopo de Barbari.

Santa Maria Formosa bell tower

Some towers are leaning, like that of the island of Burano, the lace making island. They lean due to the marshy ground on top of which they were built and the many settlements of the ground.

The tower on Burano has an inclination on the axis of 1,83 m due to the subsidence of the earth.

Burano island and Saint Martin’s belltower

The Greek church tower has the same problem, but it leans less. It was stabilized several years ago when the canal it overlooks was cleaned and excavated.

The Greek church and its leaning tower

The bell towers in their verticality are grafted and break the monotony of the architectural horizontality of the city.