by Arianna Bellunato, 2A
On 21st November we celebrate the “Festa della Madonna della Salute”, an occurrence that happens every year in Venice. On this day a lot of believers travel to Venice on pilgrimage to visit the “ Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute”.
The occurrence originated from the great epidemic of plague that hit Venice in 1630 and 1631 and which caused many deaths in the local population. Due to this epidemics, the Venetians built the Basilica to ask our Lady to save them from the plague.
It is tradition, on health thanksgiving, to have a meat-based dish, the so-called castradina, which is cabbage soup with meat from the leg of a castrated mutton. Smoked, salty mutton was the only safe meat at the time of the plague. It was imported from Dalmatia (former Yugoslavia) on Venetian cargos called trabacoli.