La Zeza Itinerante – Traditional Carnival

La Zeza Itinerante: A Carnival that moves from square to square

In the heart of the Valle del Sabato, in the province of Avellino, three small municipalities have chosen not to celebrate Carnival individually. La Zeza Itinerante – Traditional Carnival is a shared event between Torrioni, Petruro Irpino, and Chianche: a single masked parade, one troupe of actor-singers, and three villages visited in the same afternoon. The formula is simple and creates critical mass where numbers alone would be small: we are talking about villages with only a few hundred inhabitants, overlooking the valleys that descend toward the Sabato river.

What is the Zeza?

The Zeza is the sung farce of the Irpinian Carnival, a form of popular theater that descends from the 17th-century Neapolitan comedy and Commedia dell'Arte. On stage are Pulcinella, his wife Zeza, and their daughter Vicenzella, who is courted by suitors that Pulcinella does not want in his house: from this conflict arises a story of arguments, ambushes, and forced reconciliations that ends with everyone dancing. According to ancient custom, all roles, including female parts, are played by men, and the text is not recited but sung, with verses in dialect punctuated by music.

• Pulcinella: the overly jealous father and iconic mask of the Neapolitan tradition.
• Zeza: the wife, who gives her name to the entire performance.
• Vicenzella: the daughter to be married off, the comic engine of the entire plot.
• The suitors: including the wealthy doctor, who comes to blows with Pulcinella.

The rest of the procession moves around the farce: masked groups, tarantellas, quadrilles, and folk songs performed with traditional peasant instruments. It is an intangible heritage that survives in many Irpinian towns—Mercogliano, Cesinali, Capriglia Irpina, Montemiletto, and Volturara Irpina are among the most well-known—and which here takes the unusual form of a journey from one municipality to another.

The afternoon of February 15, 2026

The 2026 edition took place on Sunday, February 15, the Sunday of Carnival. The route started in Torrioni at 3:30 PM, stopped in Petruro Irpino at 5:00 PM, and concluded in Chianche, in the hamlet of Chianchetelle, at 6:30 PM. Those who arrive early can follow the entire itinerary by traveling by car along with the caravan, with the advantage of seeing the same Zeza in three different settings and in front of three different audiences.

Torrioni, the village that opens the festival

Torrioni is a municipality of just over four hundred inhabitants, at about 645 meters above sea level, in a panoramic position over the middle Valle del Sabato. The town center gathers around the mother church of San Michele Arcangelo, the patron saint celebrated on September 29, and preserves traces of the ancient Turris Ayonis from which its name derives. It is the starting point of the La Zeza Itinerante, and for one day a year, the village fills with visitors arriving from neighboring towns.

A territory to discover

Torrioni, Petruro Irpino, and Chianche all belong to the area of Greco di Tufo DOCG, one of the most important white wines of Campania: the festival therefore falls in a land of wineries, halfway between Avellino and Benevento, where wine is as much a part of the collective identity as the Carnival.

Why it is worth a visit

Those looking for the spectacular Carnival of large allegorical floats will find something different here and, for many, more interesting: a raw, community ritual where the line between actors and spectators is thin and the language of the festival is the local dialect. La Zeza Itinerante requires no more than a few hours of your time, but it provides an authentic image of the Irpinian peasant Carnival, the kind performed in the square rather than on grandstands.