English

Fire on the Comacina island

The festivity has place on isle Comacina, to the height of Tremezzo on the Lake of Como, the 24 june, day of saint John Batiste. If the recurrence does not fall in festive day, the celebrations make the saturday or Sunday after.
The origin and the name of the festival of lumaghitt are rifared an ancient for legend which three centuries ago the inhabitants of the zone succeeded to get rid from the tremendous hailstorms that every year to june devastavano the harvests, the protection of saint John Batiste and making one solemn processione whit boat to Comacina Island, where small church dedicated to the saint rose one.

From then the furious thunderstorms they stopped and the processione repeats every year, with contour of festivities and nocturnal luminarie.Is tradition to eat, for the occasion, polenta and snails.
Someone thought to use the empty shells of the molluschi: with a little oil and one make wick lumini. From here the name of lumaghitt.
Heated rafts
With the time the fires ignited on the island and floating rafts assumed also a meant other.
They remembered the great fire of the Comacina Island in 1169, when the inhabitants of Como, in order to be revenged of the comacini (than with the from Milan ones they had participated to the destruction of the city in 1127, poor the island to iron and fire, destroying every thing, comprised the nine churches that rose on the scoglio fortified.
Is. Comacina, that it was free a Common one, not resumptions more from that tragic event.The fireworks them, begin generally after the 22.