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Italy marks the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Catholic holy day, with a national public holiday on 8 December.<\/p>\n
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This year the holiday falls on a Monday, resulting in a long weekend and the closure of Italy’s schools and public offices.<\/p>\n
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One of the main events associated with the day in Italy is the pope’s pilgrimage to the statue of the Madonna at Piazza Mignanelli in Rome.<\/p>\n
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In a tradition dating back to 1958, the pope leaves a floral wreath at the base of the 19th-century Column of the Immaculate Conception near the Spanish Steps.<\/p>\n
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Firefighters will also place a garland of flowers on the top of the 12 metre-high statue of the Madonna.<\/p>\n
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Pope\u00a0Leo XIV will venerate the statue at 16.00 on 8 December, the Vatican has confirmed, leading to traffic restrictions in the area.<\/p>\n
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The day, known as L’Immacolata<\/em>, is also viewed as the official start of the Christmas shopping season in Italy.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n A\u00a0popular Roman tradition associated with 8 December is the illumination of the capital’s Christmas tree, in Piazza del Popolo, however no official announcement has been made yet.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Rome’s mayor traditionally switches on the lights of the tree\u00a0followed by the Christmas lights along the central Via del Corso on the evening of 8 December.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Holiday marks the start of the Christmas season in Italy. Italy marks the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Catholic holy day, with a national public holiday on 8 December. \u00a0 This year the holiday falls on a Monday, resulting in a long weekend and the closure of Italy’s schools and public offices. \u00a0 One<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[28912,13505,26075,7879,28911,2547,3312],"class_list":["post-44162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eventi","tag-conception","tag-december","tag-feast","tag-holiday","tag-immaculate","tag-italy","tag-marks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}