Portovenere (Italy). This is a landscape of Portovenere photographed yesterday – the 17th of August – during the celebration for the White Virgin Mary (in Italian, “Festa della Madonna Bianca”). Portovenere is an ancient and lovely town, located on the Ligurian coast of Italy (designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1997). Every year the local community (made by residents and tourists together) commemorates the special event occurred in 1399, when the image of the Virgin Mary appeared to the population becoming miraculously white and bright: in this anniversary, the town is decorated with hundreds and hundreds of small candles, which adorn the suggestive landscape of the Church built on the rock with the sea in the background, and the original image of the White Virgin Mary is carried along the narrow streets of Portovenere during a procession, with all the boats in the gulf honking the horn as an act of greeting.
No need to say it: this is an unmissable event for those who are around Portovenere and the Cinque Terre in this period.
