Christmas is getting closer! Along the streets and on the squares the first glittering lights are lightening up, the Christmas trees turning up, but best of all, it’s Christmas market time!
In Garda Trentino the smell of mulled wine, cinnamon and fir tree are waiting for you to live a combination of traditions and authenticity. Arco, Riva del Garda and Canale di Tenno interpret Christmas giving different magical ways to celebrate the most long-awaited holiday in the year.
Mercatini di Natale nei Borghi Trentini più belli d’Italia
In Canale di Tenno. Christmas is on stage but not in a magnificent square decorated with wooden stalls, but inside old barns and stone wine cellars, ready to house some local handicraft, handmade decorations and typical products. Leitmotiv of the Christmas markets is the heady smell of cinnamon and mulled wine that here permeates the whole hamlet, as the tradition implies. Speaking about hamlets, do you know that Canale is one of Italy’s most beautiful hamlets? Imagine to be able to visit it in its best and most vivd expression during Christmas time! You could live the Christmas markets every weekend from the 23th November 2019 to the 15th December, from 9.30 am to 6.30 pm.
Among woodsheds, medieval arcades, narrow decorated cobbled streets and windows done up with cobs and garlands, Christmas will have a different flavour. Far from the consumerism of big cities, Santa Claus (by the way, he lives in Riva del Garda, did you know that?) seems to be in each and every cobbled alley of Canale.
On Christmas Eve, from 10 pm, the hamlet streets will host the touching Corteo dei Pastori (the shepherd procession). The shepherds will go with the Holy Family to the High Midnight Mass to the beat of bagpipes. Whereas, on the 26th December, Saint Stephen’s Day in Italy, Canale di Tenno changes to thrust us out into the “farm Nativity” with animals, shepherds and old crafts.
And while you are deep into the rarified atmosphere of Canale di Tenno, stop for a minute and observe the tiny details. Here every stone, every glimpse speaks about a past that never stops echoing!
I am sure I will stop and taste the typical dish: carne salada e fasòi. And after having popped into Casa degli Artisti, I could finally state I have lived in a poetic medieval splendour, the deepest meaning of Christmas!
