Italy has twelve national public holidays, plus one more in every town: the feast day of its patron saint. The national list is fixed by a 1949 law and has barely changed since, and it is heavily Catholic — seven of the twelve are religious feasts. The Italian calendar also has a habit that has no exact equivalent elsewhere: the ponte, or bridge, in which a holiday falling on a Tuesday or Thursday absorbs the adjacent Monday or Friday and produces a four-day weekend by informal consensus.
The Twelve National Holidays
| Date | Holiday | Description |
|---|---|---|
| January 1 | New Year's Day (Capodanno) | Celebrations with lentils and cotechino for good luck |
| January 6 | Epiphany (Epifania) | La Befana brings gifts to children; marks the end of the Christmas season |
| April 5 | Easter Sunday (Pasqua) | Mass, colomba (dove-shaped cake), and lamb; the holiest day |
| April 6 | Easter Monday (Lunedì dell'Angelo) | "Little Easter"; families go on picnics (scampagnata) |
| April 25 | Liberation Day (Festa della Liberazione) | Commemorates the liberation from Nazi-Fascist occupation in 1945 |
| May 1 | Labor Day (Festa dei Lavoratori) | Workers' concerts and demonstrations; Rome hosts a massive free concert |
| June 2 | Republic Day (Festa della Repubblica) | National Day; celebrates the 1946 referendum; military parade in Rome |
| August 15 | Ferragosto (Assumption of Mary) | Italy virtually shuts down; beaches are packed; family feasts |
| November 1 | All Saints' Day (Tutti i Santi) | Families visit cemeteries; chrysanthemums placed on graves |
| December 8 | Immaculate Conception (Immacolata Concezione) | Catholic holiday; Christmas decorations and trees go up |
| December 25 | Christmas Day (Natale) | The most important family holiday; traditional multi-course meals |
| December 26 | St. Stephen's Day (Santo Stefano) | Second day of Christmas; visiting friends and extended family |
Every Town Has Its Own Extra Day
Italian law grants each municipality a public holiday for the feast of its patron saint, and it is a genuine closure of schools, offices and most businesses in that town only.
Rome closes on 29 June for Saints Peter and Paul. Milan closes on 7 December for Sant'Ambrogio, which coincides with the opening night of the Scala opera season. Florence, Genoa and Turin all close on 24 June for San Giovanni Battista. Naples closes on 19 September for San Gennaro, whose blood is said to liquefy in the cathedral on that day.
Venice observes San Marco on 25 April, which is also Liberation Day, so it gets no extra day. Bologna has San Petronio on 4 October; Palermo has Santa Rosalia in July with a five-day festival attached.
The Ponte
A ponte is created when a holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday and the intervening Monday or Friday is taken as leave, producing a four-day break. It is not a legal entitlement, but it is close to a national institution.
Schools frequently close for the bridge day by regional decision, and government offices often do too. Businesses handle it by encouraging staff to book the day, and traffic and travel data show clear ponte peaks.
An especially favourable alignment produces a ponte lungo, and 25 April and 1 May in the same week can generate a break of a week or more. Italian newspapers publish an annual analysis of which bridges the coming year offers.
Ferragosto and the August Shutdown
Ferragosto on 15 August is the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, and it is the pivot of the Italian summer. Around it, a substantial part of the country simply stops.
The name comes from feriae Augusti, the holidays of Augustus, instituted by the emperor in 18 BCE as a period of rest after the harvest. The Catholic Church attached the Assumption to the same date centuries later, and the pagan and Christian observances have run together ever since.
The practical effect is that many businesses, especially in the north's industrial regions, close for the whole of the middle two weeks of August. Cities empty, coastal and mountain resorts fill, and anyone trying to get anything done in Milan or Turin in mid-August will not.
Two Holidays the Republic Created
Only two of the twelve are political rather than religious or seasonal. Liberation Day on 25 April marks the 1945 uprising and the end of German occupation and of the Italian Social Republic, and the date is that of the Milan and Turin insurrections.
Republic Day on 2 June marks the 1946 referendum in which Italians voted to abolish the monarchy, by 54% to 46%. The House of Savoy went into exile, and male descendants of the last king were barred from Italian soil until 2002.
Republic Day was downgraded to a non-holiday Sunday observance in 1977 as an austerity measure and restored as a full holiday in 2001. Its military parade along Via dei Fori Imperiali in Rome is the country's main state ceremony.
The Holidays That Were Abolished
Italy used to have more. A 1977 law removed four public holidays outright — Saint Joseph on 19 March, Ascension, Corpus Domini, and Saints Peter and Paul as a national day — as an economic measure during a period of low growth and high inflation.
The Epiphany on 6 January was abolished at the same time and restored in 1985 after sustained public objection. It is the day the Befana, a broomstick-riding old woman rather than a saint, brings sweets or coal to Italian children — a tradition that predates and competes with Christmas gift-giving.
The four abolished feasts are still religiously observed and are still holidays in some municipalities where they coincide with the patron saint's day, which is why 19 March remains a closure in a number of towns.
Santo Stefano
Italy observes 26 December as Santo Stefano, the feast of St Stephen the first martyr, which functions much as Boxing Day does in Britain but has a different origin. It was added to the national holiday list in 1947 specifically to extend the Christmas break.
Together with Christmas Day and, in most years, the surrounding weekend, it produces the second-largest travel period after Ferragosto. The Christmas season in Italy conventionally runs from the Immaculate Conception on 8 December to the Epiphany on 6 January.
Nativity scenes rather than trees remain the central Christmas decoration in much of Italy, and Naples has an entire street, Via San Gregorio Armeno, devoted to making the figures year-round.
Easter and Pasquetta
Easter Sunday is a holiday by falling on a Sunday, and Easter Monday — Pasquetta, little Easter — is a full public holiday. Good Friday is not, which surprises visitors from countries where it is.
Pasquetta is traditionally spent outdoors, with a picnic or a trip out of town, and the saying is that Christmas is with your family and Easter is with whoever you like. Bad weather on Pasquetta is a reliable subject of national complaint.
Easter dates follow the Western computus, so Italy's Easter usually differs from the Orthodox one observed in Greece and Russia, sometimes by several weeks.
The Two Dates That Are Not Holidays and Should Be
Two of the most widely marked days in Italy have no holiday status. Carnevale, the week before Lent, produces the Venice masks and the enormous papier-mache floats of Viareggio and Putignano, and Martedi Grasso is an ordinary Tuesday everywhere except a handful of towns.
The other is 4 November, Armed Forces Day and the anniversary of the 1918 armistice with Austria-Hungary, which was a public holiday until the 1977 abolition and is now marked with ceremonies on the nearest Sunday.
Italy also observes several days of remembrance that are working days by design: 27 January for the Holocaust, 10 February for the foibe killings and the Istrian exodus, and 9 May for victims of terrorism. Making them holidays has been proposed and rejected on the grounds that observance rather than closure is the point.
What Italians Actually Get
Italian workers are entitled to a minimum of four weeks of paid annual leave under EU law, and collective agreements frequently provide more. Twelve public holidays plus the patron saint's day plus four weeks puts Italy comfortably above the OECD average for total time off.
If a public holiday falls on a Sunday, Italian workers are generally entitled to additional pay rather than a substitute day, under a provision dating to a 1954 law. There is no equivalent of the British or Japanese substitute holiday.
Working on a public holiday attracts a premium set by the relevant collective agreement, typically between 30% and 100% above normal rates depending on sector.
Regional Variations
Three autonomous regions add their own days. South Tyrol observes Corpus Domini and Pentecost Monday, reflecting its German-speaking Catholic tradition; the Aosta Valley observes 7 September for Sant'Orso in Aosta itself.
Trieste observes 3 November, the anniversary of its return to Italy in 1918, and San Marino and Vatican City — both enclaved within Italy — have entirely separate calendars, with the Vatican closing for papal feasts and San Marino for its founding on 3 September.
The pattern is consistent with the rest of the country's holiday system: a short national list, a long local one, and a strong assumption that when a town's saint's day comes round, the town closes. For related context, see religion in Spain, the other great Catholic calendar of southern Europe, and the count of countries in Europe.
