Feste Vigiliane

The Municipality of Trento and the Centro Servizi Culturali Santa Chiara in collaboration with the ProLoco Centro Storico di Trento present the 42nd edition of the Vigilian Festivities that will take place from 20 to 26 June 2025 in the city of Trento in honour of the patron saint San Vigilio.

Thisyear it will be an edition dedicated to spectacle and tradition, between secular and religious components. After the great success of the last edition, the Vigil Festivities are ready to return with a program full of appointments and news. It will be a calendar of events that brings together events for young and old accompanied by music, food and wine, tradition and lots of entertainment in the main places of the historic centre of the city. The Vigil Festivities represent a moment of great importance for the Trentino community, combining tradition and modernity in a festive and participatory atmosphere.

Here are some of the typical events and activities of the Vigil Festivities

Historical Parade

Characters in costumes parade through the streets of the city centre. It is an itinerant historical re-enactment in which, together with the notables of the city of the Council, characters who recall the theme to which the edition is inspired participate.

Palio dell 'Oca

A raft challenge along the river Adige that sees representatives of the districts and suburbs of Trento competing. The crews, each composed of five raftsmen in costume, are called to pass a series of skill tests that, combined with the chronometric response of the descent, decree the winner. The competition attracts thousands of citizens to the banks of the river, recalling the time when the watercourse was the beating heart of commercial activities.

Tribunal di penitenza

It is a humorous show that preludes the satirical rite of the "Tonca". A sort of investigation during which the "Supreme Judge", assisted by an unlikely Court, assesses the seriousness and the actual consistency of the misdeeds attributed to some public figures who have been dealt with by the city chronicles. At the end of a debate with "comically lively" tones, the sentence will be postponed to the day established for the "exemplary punishment" foreseen with the immersion (tonca) of the condemned person in the waters of the Adige river.

La Tonca

It is the revival in a burlesque key of an ancient punishment that seems to have been practiced between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was inflicted on blasphemers and provided for the condemned man, imprisoned in a cage, to be lowered from the Torre Verde, adjacent to the Castello del Buonconsiglio, and immersed in the waters of the Adige river which, at the time, lapped the city walls. Everything has now moved near the San Lorenzo bridge and the "Tonca" represents, with the inevitable condemnation, the final act of the "Court of Penance" during which the candidates for "public punishment" were identified.

Fireworks

The celebrations often end with a fireworks display that lights up the sky of Trento, offering a spectacular finale to the festivities.

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