In a small town of just 7,000 souls, one of the biggest festivals in all of southern Italy takes place: an explosion of lights and colours that perfectly embodies the spirit of Salento.
‘On peut souvent créer des révolutions sans les avoir cherchées’, we read on the illuminations during the Dior fashion show in July 2020 in Lecce for the presentation of the following year’s collection.
“We can often create revolutions without having looked for them” is the translation of a phrase read and seen over 100 million times in every corner of the globe during the first Italian défilé of thr Parisian fashion house.
There is no doubt that a catwalk inside the baroque Piazza Duomo can be considered revolutionary, uniting one of the most prestigious and well-known brands with the ancient Salento art of bobbin weaving, while the music and traditional dances of the Notte della Taranta Orchestra accompanied the models along the perimeter designed with the illuminations, the hallmark of every religious village festival.
And there is no doubt that no one in Scorrano – by definition a town of illuminations just 6 km from the Dimora Storica Don Totu – would have ever imagined that a tradition linked to the cult of Santa Domenica would turn into an attraction for tourists from all over the world: a revolution that was never intended but is now a distinctive feature of Salento and its culture that every visitor recognises as unmistakable.
Because, if it is true that there can be no religious festival without a procession, it is equally true that civil celebrations require illuminations, a soundbox and music (traditional and otherwise). And Maria Grazia Chiuri, Creative Director of Dior, Parisian by adoption but Salentinian by birth and soul, has succeeded in conveying this mood, this message that every tourist takes home having witnessed the countless civil celebrations that brighten up the summer evenings in the Heel of Italy.
Every year, in the first days of July, even a small town like Scorrano manages to become a capital, the world capital of illuminations: with over 400,000 visitors, making it the largest festival in Southern Italy. Like any self-respecting patron saint’s festival, this one too, through its sumptuousness, aims to demonstrate the great devotion that Scorrano has for its saint, Domenica, who is said to have appeared in a dream to an elderly lady around 1600, telling her of her decision to become the protector of the city and promising to free it from the plague. The saint, announcing that the sick would be healed, asked for the lighting of many small oil lamps on balconies and windows as proof of the healing.
These small lamps, which devotees still light during the festival, have transformed over time and the village now boasts the most beautiful illuminations ever seen: real sculptures of majestic lights that the hands of artisans arrange to create arches, rosettes, towers, castles, tunnels or any other gigantic composition conceived by the artists’ minds, making every year the creation of the plays of light the most eagerly awaited moment, the moment of the upward noses, the moment when a multitude of people eagerly await the lighting of the illuminations and the subsequent fireworks, another peculiarity in which Scorrano has become a world-class centre of excellence.
Every year a new scenography, awaited by all, keeps traditions alive. It is no surprise that this is what the Salento is all about, a healthy authenticity that eschews the negative effects of cultural globalisation. And the revolution created without having sought it, perhaps, is precisely this.