Paghese Carnival

The Paghese Carnival, living memory of the Vallo di Lauro

In Pago del Vallo di Lauro, a small town in the province of Avellino overlooking the Vallo di Lauro basin, Carnival is not just a brief moment of fun: it is an identity ritual that spans generations. The Paghese Carnival was recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Campania Region by regional decree on October 7, 2019, and is organized by the Pro Loco Pago del Vallo di Lauro with the patronage of the Municipality. Its strength lies not in monumental floats, but in two folk dances passed down from generation to generation: the laccio d'amore (love ribbon dance) and the quadrille.

The 'laccio d'amore': twelve couples, twenty-four ribbons

The laccio d'amore is the most spectacular dance in the entire Vallo di Lauro and has ancient origins, which scholars trace back to propitiatory rites linked to the fertility of the land and courtship. Twelve couples, symbolizing the twelve months of the year, arrange themselves in a circle around a pole from which twenty-four colored ribbons hang. While dancing, the dancers weave and unweave the ribbons, creating increasingly complex geometric figures: the most famous and anticipated is the diamond. Everything happens under the guidance of a master who calls out the movements, because a single wrong step is enough to ruin the pattern.

The quadrille, an 18th-century French legacy

The quadrille is a figured country dance that arrived in Campania with the French in the 18th century and was later absorbed by the local rural culture, which made it its own. It is danced in opposing pairs, always in even numbers, and the master calls the figures with French-derived commands still preserved today in the local dialect pronunciation: the star, the bridge, the circles. It is a choral dance in which the continuous crossing of the couples tells, with irony, the game of village courtship. Local figures such as Angelo Scafuro contributed to the codification and transmission of these dances as early as the 1940s and 1950s.

Costumes, masks, and the allegorical float

The Paghese Carnival procession is a small open-air museum of Irpinian rural civilization. Each community in the Vallo is recognized by its own attire, so that spectators can distinguish the arriving groups at a glance.

• The men wear knickerbockers, a white shirt, a waistcoat, and a hat.
• The women parade in long skirts, white aprons, and knotted shawls.
• The masked followers accompany the dancers and distribute sprigs of mimosa to the spectators along the route.
• The allegorical float leads the procession of folk groups through the town streets.

Rehearsals begin immediately after the Christmas holidays and involve the entire town: children, teenagers, adults, and the elderly dance together, and it is precisely this intergenerational continuity that has ensured the survival of the tradition.

A traveling carnival among the Vallo municipalities

The Paghese Carnival does not remain confined within municipal boundaries. In the days leading up to Shrove Tuesday, the groups travel to neighboring towns — from Marzano di Nola to Taurano, up to Avellino and other Irpinian centers — in a relay of reciprocal hospitality that unites the entire Vallo di Lauro. The grand finale, however, always remains at home: on the morning of Shrove Tuesday in Pernosano, a hamlet of Pago, and in the afternoon in the center of the municipal capital, when the whole town pours into the streets.

When to go and what to expect

The event falls between February and March, according to the movable Lenten calendar, with the heart of the festival on Carnival Monday and Tuesday. Visitors will find a free and informal street show, made of live music, colors, and square chatter. It is one of the best opportunities to understand the most authentic Irpinia, that of the agricultural villages of inland Campania, where folklore is not a reconstruction for tourists but a still-living practice.