For much of Florence’s international community, childhood Octobers meant trick-or-treating, broomstick-wielding and jack-o-lanterns at every turn. Coming to a culture where Halloween celebrations are few can leave you grumbling at the lack of ghouls, ghosts and spooky shenanigans. But the holiday’s scope doesn’t start and end with costumes and candy. Despite Florence’s scant Halloween celebrations, the spirit of October 31 lurks at every turn—no matter the time of year.
As we inch nearer to November 1, I’ve heard many a friend moan about how the national holiday falls on a Sunday this time, lamenting that lost possibility for a long ponte weekend. Few among us (myself included) have thought much about the origins of our would-be day off, but it’s the Christian celebration of All Hallows or All Saints’ Day, hence ‘Halloween,’ our abbreviation of All Hallows’ Eve. ‘Saints’ may be defined differently according to denomination, but across the board, it’s a day to pay tribute to those who have paved the way before us. The spiritual side of this festival is threefold, culminating in All Souls’ Day on November 2, when those on earth remember the departed.
So where do the witches, ogres, ghosts and skeletons fit in? Long before Beyonce and Breaking Bad-themed outfits became costume party standards, Halloween was a night to confront the fear of death head-on, laughing in its face by fully embracing what frightened people most. But you don’t have to be a card-carrying Catholic, or even remotely religious, to relate to these rituals. Living in Florence automatically links you to a continuous cycle of communal remembrance. Beyond its basilicas and frescoes, cloisters and chapels, Florence’s holiness lies for many in its long tradition of humanist thought and manmade beauty, in its constant reminders of what the past created.
Residents regularly bridge past and present as we stroll the streets where Renaissance titans once trod. But let’s get literal—for a moment, anyway—and talk burial places. Actual graveyards, plots and church tombs. From Porte Sante at the Basilica of San Miniato to the American cemetery to the Temple of Italian Glories itself, Santa Croce, these places are Florence’s physical embodiments of the spirit of those three days from October 31 to November 2.
Robert Pogue Harrison, author of The Dominion of the Dead and, incidentally, a scholar of Italian literature, builds his book around the claim that cemeteries are for the living, not the dead. In Harrison’s view, ‘humans bury not simply to achieve closure and effect a separation from the dead, but also and above all to humanize the ground on which they build their worlds and found their histories {…} Humanity is not a species, but a way of being mortal and relating to the dead’.
How else do we explain the notes scattered before the tomb of Botticelli, the flowers laid delicately on so many Florentine graves or the sheer magnificence of the Medici Chapels? What sense would there be in giving Galileo such a grand tomb or grouping painters, poets and physicists in the scenic grounds near San Miniato? Florence’s cemeteries and burial spots are far from the only places that contain this spirit. History and memory are hallmarks of the Florentine identity. So whatever you end up doing on Halloween weekend—trick-or-treating, Tuscan-cemetery traipsing, pumpkin carving or something on the extra-eerie side—remember that your participation in these rituals ties you to a long line of former Florence greats.
