Campobasso Events

The Sagra dei Misteri

On the feast of Corpus Domini, thirteen eighteenth-century iron machines are carried through the city with children and adults strapped into them, costumed as saints, angels and devils and arranged in poses that appear to defy gravity. The devices are the originals, built by Paolo Saverio Di Zinno in the 1740s; the bearers are members of families who have carried them for generations. It lasts most of the day and draws the whole province. Nothing else in Italy works quite like it.

Corpus Domini week

The days around it fill with concerts, markets and the preparation of the machines, which can be watched.

San Giorgio

The patronal feast on 23 April, older and much quieter than the Misteri, centred on the Romanesque church at the top of the old town that is the oldest building in the city.

Summer in the province

Through July and August almost every village in Molise runs its own sagra, and the Matese villages fill with returning families.

The autumn markets

October and November bring the cheese, the new oil and the Tintilia, sold at fairs through the valleys, and this is when the region is at its most generous and least organised.

The Misteri out of season

The machines are stored, maintained and periodically rebuilt through the year by the association that runs them, and the workshop and museum can be visited — which for most travellers is the only realistic way to see them at all.

Markets

The weekly market in the new city is the practical event of the week for the whole province, and the one reliable time to see the villages come down into the capital.