Spello Flower Festival: Everything You Need to Know

An ancient tradition that attracts thousands of tourists from around the world to Spello: the flower festival

The flower festival in Spello has become a major tradition that, year after year, brings thousands of tourists to this town in the province of Perugia from all over Italy and even abroad.

This event takes place along the streets of Spello every year in celebration of Corpus Christi, which occurs on the ninth Sunday after Easter.

The flower arrangers of Spello - as the passionate volunteers who carry on the tradition of floral work are called - prepare for the event throughout the entire year.

The goal is to create, for this festival, beautiful and impressive "tables" made of colorful flowers that can be appreciated by tourists and visitors coming to admire them from all over Italy and - especially in recent years - also from around the world.

The flower festival involves closing all main streets in the center of Spello to traffic, transforming them into immense canvases to be "painted" with artistic works created solely from flowers.

Tradition dictates that the choice of flowers to be used and the subjects to be depicted occurs in the months leading up to Corpus Christi, with the works actually displayed starting on the evening before the feast, when the streets begin to fill with tourists.

There are entire weeks of preparation leading up to the event: master florists form work groups in the months prior, with each group assigned specific tasks and areas in which to work.

The flowers used are collected from Mount Subasio and the Umbrian-Marche Apennines in the weeks leading up to the festival.

Choosing the flowers involves often drying them, and at times, they are used not whole but by separating the petals. The elderly women of the village prepare the petals for use.

To create the artworks, it is also possible to use leaves and berries (though to a much lesser extent than flowers), but wood or other materials cannot be used to complete the designs.

Each artwork - depicting sacred images as well as faces of famous figures and icons related to religion - must have specific dimensions.

Each piece may not be shorter than 12 meters or less than 24 square meters in area. Each piece is created solely in two dimensions, and the three-dimensionality of the artwork is achieved exclusively through the use of colors and perspectives.

The tradition of the Flower Festival in Spello has ancient roots. The earliest documentation of throwing flowers and petals during the city's religious celebrations dates back to 1602.

The first true iconography created in the Umbrian town with flowers for Corpus Christi dates back to the early 1900s.

Benvenuto Crispoldi, a painter and also briefly the mayor of Spello, depicted the city's procession for Corpus Christi in one of his works, where the flower artworks on the streets can be seen.

This year, the flower festival in Spello will take place on June 1 and 2, 2024.