Halloween/All Saint's Day in Venice

General comments not specific to Venice:

All Saints is a big family holiday in Italy, with everyone heading to the cemetery to clean and decorate the graves of their loved ones. Halloween is an American holiday (as you no doubt know) that is gaining in popularity for children in Italy.

There is not likely to be ANY Halloween stuff in Venice or anyplace near it. That is purely American and is for some but not many. Years ago, it was promoted in France and didnt catch on. Some manufactured days, like Hween, are growing in popularity ( a tribute to advertising and cash)but none has garnered official support (read parades and public celebration) or substantial private backing.

We returned to southern California less than a year ago after 2 years of living in Paris. Many bars in the Marais (3rd arrondisement) were heavily decorated for the 31st, it was quite a lively evening. That's why I thought Venice, where there's a tradition of dressing up and having street parties, might have similarly been corrupted by such a quintessentially American holiday.

Don't know about Venice, but we saw evidence of celebrating Halloween in Rome in 2002. All Saints day was the bigger event (the city was full of Italian visitors and Pilgrims).

Halloween is catching on here for children and teenagers, Venice won't have any special activities planned, it is not an Italian holiday. Carnivale is the time to come to Venice if you want to see people dressed up. All Saint's Day is a national holiday so Venice may be more crowded than usual as many Italians travel for the holiday weekend.

Venice more crowded than usual, oh oh.

I was also in Rome on Halloween. There was an organized pub crawl with a large group in costume. It was virtually all twenty something Americans. I'm not sure who organized it. We joined for awhile then went our own way (not in costume).

We were in Venice last year on Oct.30-31.On the 31st in Murano they celebrated Halloween.Children were dressed up and walking house to house.On Nov. 1 when we left Venice the auto rental places were only open from 9-12.Other then that we saw nothing that indicated it was all saints day.

Great question, Betsy.

I will be in France this same time, and I'm wondering what to expect there, too.

We were in Salzburg on All Saints Day. The B&B owner said trick or treat had caught on there--probably to a lesser extent than at home. All Saints is quite a huge event there and Germany as well. The cemeteries were all lit up with candles and flowers everywhere. Graves were almost manicured. This may have been All Souls Day. We were in Rothenburg on a previous day and there was only one gate to the town open--made it quite tricky to locate B&B. It seemed to be a major holiday but most of the crowd left by dusk. On a previous trip in October to Bruges and Paris we saw lots of Halloween decorations in store windows. Lots of chocolate cats and pumpkins in candy shops in Bruges.