Every year Nola, in Campania, celebrates San Paolino, or Saint Paulinus, with a procession of enormous structures carried on the shoulders of local teams, the famous Gigli. The festival is part religious devotion, part civic identity, part physical performance, and since 2013 it has been included by UNESCO in the network of Italy’s “big shoulder-borne processional structures,” together with Viterbo’s Macchina di Santa Rosa, Sassari’s Candelieri, and Palmi’s Varia.
According to tradition, Paolino, bishop of Nola, had offered himself as a hostage to free local citizens captured during barbarian invasions, probably linked to the Visigoths led by Alaric. When he eventually returned to Nola years later, the population welcomed him carrying lilies (“gigli” in Italian), which over time evolved into the huge festive structures seen today.
