Festa de l'Unità

Festa de l'Unità is an annual social-democratic celebration in Italy, originally organised by the Italian Communist Party to finance and spread its official newspaper l'Unità ("Unity"), and now organised by Partito Democratico. It is often misspelled Festa dell'unità ("Unity party"), since people forget where the name comes from.

The "festa" is generally organized as lots of separated happenings, usually one for each city, but where the Communist party was more present, every local branch organized its own happening and often all of them collaborated to the organization of a large one as well. Typical aspects are low-price or free typical foods, live music, prize games and street markets. Small events start already in July, but the main happenings take place in September.

While the political aspect was preponderant in its first times, and is at times still important, it has developed with time into a social event for the youth (music events and discos) and elderly people (talking about the political adventures of their past and dancing swing).

In some parts of Italy, especially in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, each and every small village seems to have its own "festa de l'Unità", which is often the biggest social event of the year. In Florence and in Bologna, they have developed into a two-week long, tens-of-thousands-people-packed event that has little resemblance to the original political gathering, and are instead two of the biggest attractors for young people in the nearby areas

External links

• Official website