Offida

Offida has won the award as one of the “Most beautiful Italian towns”. The Rocca dominates the town from above: a fortress featuring two cylindrical towers of special beauty.The town also offers other historical and artistic beauties of considerable interest: the town hall, with its elegant structure, whose bell tower was donated by Cardinal Peretti, later Pope Sisto V; the historical theatre “Serpente Aureo” (Golden Snake), one of the most elegant of the Marche, the church of Santa Maria della Rocca, a Romanesque-Gothic brick building with a magnificent crypt with multiple aisles divided by low brick columns, which houses paintings of the second half of the fourteenth century; the Sant'Agostino Shrine, another national monument of great importance.The city is also famous for the original production of the “merletto a tombolo”, a particular lace, (there are signs of it as early as 1476), whose tradition is commemorated every year in a special exhibition from July 20th to August 20th.The Carnival is a real collective celebration, historical, particularly participated, which is divided into two parts: one dedicated to "Bove Fint" and the other to "Vlurd": ancient rites, almost Bacchic, of liberation. The "Bove Finto" (fake ox) is a bullfight in which a rudimentary wooden and iron ox causes havoc to the town streets on Fat Friday, while the "Velurd" are burning bundles of reeds and straw carried on the shoulders by Offidaers, disguised in the traditional outfit, called "Guazzarone", on Fat Tuesday at sunset, creating a trail of fire rushing through the streets.With the flames of the great final fire, the historical carnival ends, so dear to the inhabitants of the town, and capable of generating a sense of unbridled freedom.