By Julia Buckley, CNN
Caltanissetta, Sicily (CNN) — The countdown to the holidays has begun. Christmas markets, mulled wine, ice skating — around the world, on every continent, people are starting to gear up to get into the festive spirit.
But one Sicilian town is already focusing on what comes next: Easter.
Caltanissetta, dead in the center of the Mediterranean’s largest island, is renowned across Italy for its Easter celebrations and parades.
Forget chocolate egg hunts and cute bunnies; think lifesize figures narrating the Passion of Christ in lacerating detail, devout worshippers tramping barefoot through the city streets, and the keys to the city being handed over to a member of the public. In the past, the celebrations even entailed setting a convict free from jail. Sadly, for those currently banged up in Caltanissetta, this is one tradition that has remained firmly in the past.
The Easter traditions — which are still so deeply felt that Caltanissetta emigrés return each year to celebrate in their thousands — date back centuries.
The most spectacular takes place every Maundy Thursday, with the procession of the vare: lifesize tableaus of scenes from the Via Crucis, which are wheeled around the city from the moment the sun goes down till the early hours of the morning.
The vare scenes were made by father-and-son artist duo, Francesco and Vincenzo Biangardi, between 1883 and 1902. Originally from Naples, the duo had moved south to work as artists in Calabria and Sicily, before transferring to Caltanissetta to create these figures — which would become their masterpiece.
On shoulder-height, wheeled platforms, they stand, looming over the crowds. Each depicts in often harrowing detail Christ’s journey to the cross.
There he is in front of the high priest Caiaphas, having been whipped; stumbling in front of Veronica, who will wipe his face with her veil; and praying in the garden of Gethsemane.
There’s the Last Supper, a vast tableau in which the disciples turn on each other to work out who has betrayed their master. In its own way, it is as spectacular as Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous “Last Supper” fresco in Milan.
And there is Mary and the young St. John embracing him as he is taken down from the cross in a “Pietà” scene as tender as Michelangelo’s famous sculpture in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Together, there are 16 vare, 15 of which were made by the Biangardi duo, using papier maché, plaster and wood.
“They’re very important for the city,” says Salvatore Petrantoni, Caltanissetta’s councillor who is responsible for events, including Holy Week. “One vara alone wouldn’t be very valuable, but as a group, within the tradition, they become important.”
Certainly, as they’re wheeled around Caltanissetta in one great procession, they pack a punch. They’re huge, for starters: each figure is at least lifesize, with some much larger. And they’re set on rolling platforms that start roughly at shoulder height for the teams of strongmen that must push them.
Setting off at 8 p.m. sharp, each group is accompanied by a marching band. Each band’s music competes against those on either side, making the narrow streets of Caltanissetta echo with dirges and solemn marches.
And as well as the people pushing each tableau — it can take up to six people to move them, although these days they also get help with motorized wheels under the carts — there are others accompanying them. Members of the public follow “their” vara in a procession, while guild members pave the way, setting off flares in the streets to announce the arrival of the carts.
Meanwhile, each vara has a leader, impeccably dressed in a tailcoat, who conducts the movement of the tableau with a metal baton, clinking it on the cart’s pulley to tell those pushing from the back when to stop and when to start again.
Ahead of them all goes the cuntastoria, or “story-teller,” a woman crying out the story of the gospels in Sicilian.
It’s a ballet delivered with precision that drops the onlookers straight into the emotion of the Easter story in this deeply Catholic part of Italy. Thousands converge on the town’s main square outside the cathedral to watch the procession take off, blessed by the bishop; to follow the carts up, down and around the hilly town; or to emerge from their houses in the wee hours to watch the carts make their way through the narrow residential streets.
Wherever the procession goes, there are hundreds of people waiting for it. They part silently like the Red Sea as the carts come towards them.
Art for the people
The scenes aren’t just artistically beautiful; they have meaning for the community. Each was assigned to a different group, or guild, of workers in the city, from bakers to blacksmiths, carpenters to plumbers. Several were assigned to miners — the area around Caltanissetta was famous for its sulfur mines in the 19th century. “It was a way of giving thanks for there being no disasters in the mines,” says Petrantoni. One was commissioned by a group of miners who survived an explosion that tragically killed their co-workers.
The procession of the vare, which sets off on Maundy Thursday, is the most spectacular of Caltanissetta’s Easter rituals, but it’s far from the only one. Here, the tradition continues for the whole of Easter week.
Wednesday is the day of the Real Maestranza — essentially a collection of the historic artisans of the city. The group dates back to the medieval period, when Caltanissetta’s rulers put together a private army to defend the city in case of Saracen invasion. Today, it’s a civilian group divided into subsets, like guilds, each representing a profession: painters and decorators, pastry-makers, carpenters, hairdressers and so on.
These civilians take over the city on the Wednesday before Easter, when the “captain” of the Real Maestranza — chosen from one of the subgroups each year — goes to the town hall with a symbolic sword, and is handed the key to the city on a cushion.
The mayor says goodbye to his power; for the rest of Holy Week, this captain is the “padrono della città,” or lord of the city, in charge of Caltanissetta. In the past, he (it’s always a he) could select one prisoner from the local jail to be released. Unfortunately for today’s malfeasants, the captain is now longer given the power of reprieval; however he still gets to wear the bombastic traditional costume of a tailcoat, breeches and white stockings, as he goes about his business, lording it up over the citizens for the week. The members of the Real Maestranza also take out a procession of varicedde — little vare — on the Wednesday evening.
A miraculous statue
But for the truly devout nisseni (as Caltanissetta natives are known), Good Friday is the most important evening. This is when, led again by the Real Maestranza, they process around town with the Cristo Nero, or Black Christ: a wooden sculpture of the crucifix that is believed to be miraculous, and is so beloved that it’s known as the Signore della Città, or Lord of the City. In a spectacular procession, the Cristo Nero is removed from its home in the Santuario Signore della Città church; outside, it is topped with a golden globe and paraded up the steep hill into the center of town, before following the procession route around the city.
The carving is beloved by the nisseni not only because it’s said to be miraculous, but because it’s linked to the very poorest in society, explains Tony Gangitano, an Italian film director originally from Caltanissetta. It is said to have been discovered by fogliamari — people who scraped a living by foraging for wild herbs and leaves in the countryside to then sell in towns — in 1618. Out picking (fogliamari means “bitter leaves”) in the countryside outside Caltanissetta, they are said to have entered a cave, where they found two candles burning either side of the carving. When they washed the crucifix clean of dirt, the color immediately darkened again, giving rise to its Cristo Nero name.
Modern research suggests the carving is of Byzantine origin, making it one of the oldest crucifixion sculptures in Sicily. To this day, nobody knows where it came from, or how it ended up in that cave outside Caltanissetta.
“I was always fascinated by the processions,” says Gangitano, who now lives between Sicily and the mainland. He planned to make a short film about the ritual, but turned it into a feature-length film, blending documentary and historical re-enactment. Starring celebrated Italian actor Gaetano Aronica and filmed in the medieval part of town built by the Arab conquerors, who ruled here in the medieval period, “U Cristu Truvatu” took the top prize at the Taipei Golden Horse International Film Festival in 2022.
Today, the fogliamari still exist — walk through Caltanissetta in the daytime and you’ll often see vans and cars pulled up roadside with freshly picked wild herbs and salad leaves on the bonnet for sale. Members of their association head up the Good Friday procession, ahead of the local priests. They’re followed by nisseni walking barefoot through the city — those who have made a vow to the Cristo Nero — and the suited and booted members of the Real Maestranza, each carrying a lantern. Some carry swords, lances or shields, too.
“It’s the most silent of the processions with the most people attending,” says Petrantoni of the Good Friday event. As they walk through the quiet streets, the fogliamari lead chants and lamentations in a mixture of Sicilian and Latin, what Gangitano calls “an extremely tight dialect.”
It’s an extraordinary, almost biblical sight — and for believers it’s one of the most moving events of Easter here in Sicily. “People cry because they know they have to wait another year,” says Petrantoni, who says that of the 60,000 population of Caltanissetta, around half attend, while around 1,000 form the official core of the procession, walking barefoot around town for several hours.
“The traditions are felt more in Sicily because from childhood we live them,” says Petrantoni, who walks barefoot alongside the Cristo Nero himself, and who feels the importance of the processions so deeply that the position of councillor for events was created for him. His influence continues throughout the year — windows of closed-down shopfronts display images of the vare and the other processions, reminding Caltanissetta year-round of its Easter traditions.
You’ll also be reminded if you set foot in Pasticceria de Fraia, one of Caltanissetta’s famed pastry shops: It’s here they make the spina santa, a pastry modelled on the crown of thorns, with blueberry jam inside. It was created for the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1993. “He said it was the best thing he ever ate,” says Gangitano, proudly.
For Petrantoni, “The vare remind us what we have always been. There’s so much history — that’s why we take such good care of them.” Rather than being a once-a-year procession, he is trying to use them for other events, bringing out some varicedde in September for an event. Although the vare are always in his mind — and always on display on those shopfronts around town — in February the planning for 2026’s Holy Week will start in earnest.
Gangitano, who specializes in making films about Sicily, says that even in a changing world, retaining these traditions is crucial.
“They’re at the root of the identity of every town, every person,” he says.
“If we don’t know the past, we can’t face the present.”
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