Every year, in September, the city of Lanciano is transformed into a theater of events and historical re-enactments to celebrate Our Lady of the Bridge: on September 8, the religious feast of the Nativity of Mary, more than 30 contrade represented by peasant women in local historical dress parade, also with carts, through the city center to give life to a great feast carrying on their heads the characteristic Abruzzese basins filled with wheat and first fruits of the fields, to make a gift to the city’s Protector. Each contrada organizes its own wagon to stage the Gift, one of the most heartfelt traditions of the Lancianesi: opening the parade amid song and dance are the four historic quarters of the city, followed by the other contrade and accompanied by horses, oxen and other animals, filling their wagons not only with the products of the earth but also with handcrafted objects and tools, as was once the case, often made directly on the wagons themselves. These represent the “fruits” of man’s labor, symbolically offered to Our Lady of the Bridge, with a public auction held in the evening with the sale of the donations; people can thus participate in the auction but also enjoy together the dishes of typical Abruzzo cuisine.
The feast of Our Lady of the Bridge comes into full swing on the night of Sept. 13 with the traditional vigil, considered the oldest“White Night,” dating back to as far as 1833, when two local priests walked to the Vatican to pick up the golden crowns for the Statue of the Virgin and Child, which is located in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Bridge. The people of Lanciano, upon learning the news of their imminent return with the gifts, did not know how to wait, and many of the faithful went to Castel Frentano, escorting the crowns until they arrived at the church of Santa Chiara in Lanciano at two o’clock in the morning.
The program of holidays starts from September 1 and ends on the 30th of the month, it is called the September Festivities and, to mark the occasion, Plebiscite Square will host events in honor of the festivities, which will come into full swing from September 13 to 16.
CURIOSITY.
The Church of Our Lady of the Bridge is so named because it is built over a three-arched bridge (the Diocletian Bridge). In 1088, while restoring the Bridge after an earthquake, an ancient statue of the Madonna and Child was found: the event, believed to be miraculous, led to the renaming of this icon Madonna del Ponte, and a chapel was built to guard it on the bridge itself. Growing popular devotion led, at the end of the 14th century, to the construction of a church in place of the chapel that covered the bridge entirely; the church visible today was built around 1788, with the façade remaining unfinished at the top. The vault and domes are frescoed. The statue of Our Lady of the Bridge is located in a niche in the center of the high altar.
