Bonfire in Bologna.
The best New Year's Eve tradition you've never heard of.
Bologna, Italy has one of the best New Year’s Eve traditions, and I am begging you to plan a week based in Venice and then to pop over to Bologna for NYE to experience it.
The backstory: My husband and I usually head to Europe after Christmas through the new year. In fact, we selected December 28th for our wedding precisely because it would give us an excuse to take down that damned tree first thing on the 26th, kick everyone out of the house by the 27th, board a plane to Paris or Amsterdam, and arrive on the 28th to celebrate our holy matrimony at a good restaurant in a city more exciting than Seattle.
One year we connected onward to Venice and spent a perfect week there. New Year’s Eve in Venice was packed - almost scarily so (more on that later), but the event we can’t stop talking about is what we saw in Bologna, a spectacular tradition that isn’t well known outside of Italy, and seems to be unknown to a lot of Italians, as well.
We took a 90 minute train from Venice to Bologna for a day trip and when we arrived at Piazza Maggiore, the main square of the city, huge crowds were gathered, grabbing scraps of paper and using each other’s backs as desks. We asked two kids if they spoke English and could explain what was happening we were told that everyone writes down things they wish to leave behind in the new year and then they put the papers in the wood pyre.
This explained the giant wood structure in the piazza. This is Vecchione, “The Old Man.” At midnight, the piazza fills with people to watch the countdown and to see the entire structure go up in flames. This enormous bonfire is the city’s way of ringing in the new year, and importantly - ringing out the old. We didn’t stay for the fire; we hadn’t even known about this event, and we didn’t have a hotel for the night. But we googled it later to see the video, and wow. We plan to go back at some point to see the entire event.