OSTUNI

Christmas in Ostuni

Ostuni, known as the Città Bianca because of its shining white walls, is a stunning small town situated about 25 miles north-west of Brindisi. It is built on three hills and seems to grow out of the rocks high above the Adriatic, a dazzling stretch of turquoise ocean which can be seen across the plains below, which are studded with thousands of ancient olive trees. It was an important Greco-Roman city in the first century AD and has a wonderful variety of architecture, from the maze of narrow medieval streets of the Centro Storico to the lovely baroque arched doorways of the 18th century area. Local guide books will tell you all about the cathedral with its beautiful rose window and the many lovely churches.

There is lots to see and enjoy in Ostuni and you can happily spend a week or two there without travelling anywhere else. The main square, the Piazza della Libertà, is dominated by a 21m high column, topped by a statue of San Oronzo, the patron saint of the town, who smiles benignly down at locals and tourists as they mill around for the evening passegiata. In summer the place is buzzing with people until late at night.

There is a children’s play area in the pleasant public gardens with their tall palm trees and lovely little café-bar 5 minutes’ walk from our apartments.

The people of Southern Italy are warm and friendly: here's our neighbour Domenica showing us how to make orecchiette - she is 86 and started making the 'little ears' pasta when she was 6 years old.

Christmas in Ostuni

Christmas in Italy is very special as Italian Christmas celebrations and traditions are quite different from those in the UK. It’s fun to spend your Christmas holidays in Italy. So why not take a short break for Christmas? New Year’s Eve in Italy also has its own traditions.You might want to come on Christmas Eve as that’s when Italian Christmas celebrations really start, and they go on until Twelfth Night (known as La Befana, another particularly Italian tradition) on 6 January.Ostuni is fun to visit during the Christmas period as there are all sorts of special local celebrations. There are very few foreign tourists but those who do come find this a delightful experience - a perfect winter break for Christmas and the New Year. The weather can be lovely, with plenty of sunshine, sometimes as warm as late Spring – but in these times of global warming no weather can ever be guaranteed. However you are extremely unlikely to see any snow!

Apart from the usual Christmas decorations, you may find Christmas trees decorated with real or imitation white feathers, dating from the days when the Christmas goose had to be plucked. From the beginning of December the bakers start selling pettole, small pieces of deep-fried pasta dough. Delicatessens and butchers offer wild boar sausages and of course you will find the ubiquitous pannetone in cake shops all round the town, often in extremely elaborate packaging.

Then there will be street stalls selling walnuts hot chestnuts and dried figs, and the little ape trucks sell the wonderful local oranges which you can see on trees not only in the countryside but also in the little gardens round the town . They seem to glow, bright orange natural Christmas decorations shining against a background of luxuriant green leaves – and of course they taste fantastic, different from any orange you will find in the UK.

Another lovely custom here is the Presepe Vivente , literally ‘a living Christmas crib. In the narrow alleyways of the Centro Storico. This takes place from 20 -26 December, 30 December and 6 January. Local people dressed in the costume act out the Christmas story, beginning with the decree of Caesar Augustus, through the court of King Herod with dancing girls and finally into the stable with Mary, Joseph, and a real local baby. Outside Ostuni’s massive white walls, goats graze on the rocks on which the town is built. On the way, in little corners under ancient arches, local craftsmen show their skills in trades many of them almost unchanged since the time of Christ: a carpenter works in olive wood, a sculptor carves the local soft stone, a fisherman mends his nets; there are stalls where bakers show off bread cooked in wood ovens and women grind meal between hand operated millstones, and if you need refreshment you will find women selling vino caldo All the towns round Ostuni have their own presepe vivente, the most spectacular being the one in Pezzo di Greco, about 45 minutes’ drive from Ostuni, where a similar celebration takes place, but within a large complex of caves outside the town. There is often a competition to choose the best Christmas crib, made by children from Ostuni schools and local artisans. Usually these have miniature figures set inside a backlit ‘cavern’ inside hollow pieces of olive wood - particularly appropriate because in the olive groves of Puglia there are ancient trees called secolari (centuries old) some of which are said to date from the time of Christ. This story may not be entirely true but the trees are certainly hundreds of years old (and still produce a good crop of olives.) It is extraordinary to think what scenes the trees have ‘witnessed’: the sacking of the town by Lombard, Saracens, Byzantine, Norman and Spanish invaders.

Christmas is a day spent with the family and this is when children get their main presents from Father Christmas (Babbo Natale) Italian children don’t hang up their stockings on Christmas Eve: instead Babbo Natale leaves all the presents under the Christmas tree (though this is a relatively new custom: older people remember that Christmas trees appeared in this part of Italy only about 50 years ago, a custom imported from Germany as it was in the UK though many years earlier).

These days families often go out to a restaurant for Christmas lunch, so you need to reserve a table in good time. Traditional fare does not differ hugely from the usual large Italian lunch, though nowadays people choose turkey rather than goose, along with beef, meatballs (polpette) and specially mixed grill which, if the meal is at home, is often cooked by the men of the family over an olive wood fire.

The churches of course play a major part in the celebrations and Ostuni’s lovely 15th century Cathedral will be full of worshippers at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. But also throughout the whole month of December many of the town’s churches open their doors for a marvellous series of concerts, not just classical music but also jazz and pop. Usually based on a Christmas theme, the performances are of a high standard and of course the acoustic of these lovely churches is excellent. Even if you are not particularly musical you will have a chance to see inside most of the churches of Ostuni.

The next big celebration is of course New Year’s Eve. The traditional food used to be pigs’ trotters or pigs’ cheeks and lentils and if you counted the number of lentils on your plate, that signified the number of old lire you would get in the next year. A delicacy still eaten by the Ostunese (but mainly by the older residents) is freshly cooked eel and outside the fishmongers’ shops at this time you will see them swimming around in tanks of water on rockers as the water has to be kept moving. People buy the live eels and it’s a bit of a shock when you first see them going home with a plastic bag full of wriggling creatures! Again many Ostunese choose to go out to a restaurant and as midnight approaches champagne is brought out and there is a big countdown. At the stroke of midnight everyone shouts Auguri and Buon Anno and everyone kisses everyone else on both cheeks – Italians are good at kissing total strangers. After midnight everyone goes to the main Piazza where there is a concert, usually of rock music, on a stage erected for the purpose. The Piazza is packed with revellers, there is singing and dancing and a group will usually start a conga, known here as il treno, the train. Then around 12.30 January 1st is welcomed with a firework display. (In the days leading up to New Year you will hear loud bangs which you might fear are gunshots: they are just firecrackers known locally as botte (literally means loud bangs) let off in the streets by boys small and large!

The Auguri greetings continue until Twelfth Night, known both as Epifania and La Befana. It is on the eve of Twelfth Night that stockings are hung over the fireplace to be filled, mainly with sweets and small gifts. A lovely shop called Asciano, at the end of the main shopping street Viale Pola, will be packed with people buying all sorts of delicious sweets and chocolates to fill the stockings, which are said to be filled by the witch Befana, a name which some say is a corruption of Epifania. The story goes that an old widow remembers the time when she and her husband used to make wooden toys for children but she has lost the will to make them since her husband died and the toys are left to gather dust in her attic. One day the snow almost covers the cottage where she lives alone in the forest. There is a knock at the door and three strangers in fine clothes beg food and shelter. She shares with them her meagre meal of soup and bread and then they say they must be on their way: they are on the way to bring gifts to a newborn baby who is said to be the Son of God. They invite Befana to come with them but she refuses and is left alone in her cottage. After a while she regrets her choice and decides to follow the three Kings, but is worried that she has no gift to bring the Christ Child. Then she remembers the toys left in the attic. She packs them into an old sack and sets off to catch up the Kings and finally is able to present her gift to Baby Jesus; and ever after she flies through the sky on her broomstick on January the Fifth, bringing toys to children everywhere. In the shops you will see toy witches with their sacks full of toys, sometimes real sweets.

On the day of Epiphany, 6 January, Ostuni’s celebrations end with a final performance of the Presepe Vivente in the Centro Storico and a concert in the market area in the modern part of town. The concert, Viva Viva La Befana ,usually begins with an exhibition of flag-throwing, a custom special to the nearby town of Carovigno: a group of young men dressed in medieval doublet and hose perform a complicated routine involving throwing large flags into the air and catching them, accompanied by trumpeters and drummers and often a fire-eater leaping dangerously among the flags. Then two local folk groups, Gruppo Folk La Stella and Gruppo Folk Citta di Ostuni, will perform traditional songs and dances and will invite children up on stage to join them in the Tarantella or the Pizzica Pizzica dance, which Ostuni children learn from the age of about 2. It’s fascinating to watch tiny children who know all the dance steps.[Photo of folk dancers] There are stalls selling pettole, sugary doughnuts, barbecued sausages and zucchero filato (candy floss) which is given away free to the children, who also get sweets from two enormous Befana figures on stilts. .There are also free horse rides and rides in a little train around the huge market area. The celebrations end with the burning of an effigy of La Befana on top of a huge bonfire, symbolising the passing of all bad experiences of the last year, and looking forward to Spring.

Please view this locally made tourist video of Ostuni. It has lots of information about the town, its history and the surrounding area. © Commune di Ostuni - Assessorato al Turismo