Santa Rosa - The Day After (September 4)

The actual holiday for Santa Rosa isn't actually celebrated until the day after La Macchina...which makes sense, actually.  The procession of La Macchina is pretty long, with the bands processing through the town starting around 7 p.m. and the end of the procession with the fireworks afterwards not ending until well after midnight.  Who could go to work the next morning after all that!?!

Many of the streets were lined with vendors, selling everything from pantyhose to artwork to kitchen appliances and everything in between.  The market lasted all day, as I heard the clanking from the disassembling of the tents and temporary barricades in the wee hours of the night.  As you can see from the picture at the right, it was very well attended and the weather was spectacular once again!  This is one of those times where I was super happy not to own a car and live right in the thick of the vintage goings-on in Viterbo.





Here's a little trinket I picked up from one of the local vendors at the market.




Just one example of how a vendor laid out his merchandise for the passersby.  Incidentally, the word for jeans in Italian is....jeans!








For a solid week, La Macchina will rest in front of La Chiesa di Santa Rosa (The Church of St. Rose).  The church, as you can imagine for one built 1850, was stunning on the inside.  I would have taken pictures of it but a mass going on at the time.  More on this church in a later blog.  It has an interesting history.







As part of my 3-hour traverse through the market, there is a great ledge that gives you this amazing view of La Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, which served as the seat of the papacy for several popes in the 13th century.