The Feast of the Easter Arches of San Biagio Platani began in the second half of the 1600s when the two Confraternities, respectively “Madunnara” based in the Mother Church and “Signurara” based in the Carmine Church near the Calvary, they took care to artistically delimit the sacred space where the meeting of the Risen Christ with the Madonna his Mother takes place on Easter day.

Starting with the term “Archi di Pasqua” one immediately understands what the structure is. The scenic apparatus of the event refers to the triumphal arch which in basilican architecture represented the limit, the threshold of passage from the central nave to the transept where the sacred rite takes place. The triumphal arches of San Biagio Platani (AG) mark the sacred space where the ritual of the triumph of life over death, the victory of Christ, the revelation of the “Mystery” in the resurrection takes place.

This ceremonial takes place at a precise moment of the year, when nature, with an explosion of scents and colors, celebrates the awakening of Spring in the Sicani Valley.

It is no coincidence that the structure of the central arches takes shape in a fusion of plant materials, products of nature, an architecture of fruits, essences, smells and what the peasant people can offer to the victorious Christ. Bread, the fruit of hard work in the fields, is the essential decorative element of the architecture of the celebration, in which it takes on a connotative symbolism of the rhythms of the life of a people. A people that gave rise to a unique event, full of devotion, culture and art.

The religious centrality of the festival leads through the exuberance and vitality of the collective imagination to the most surprising forms of Art: Architecture – Painting – Sculpture – Entertainment – Sounds – Gestures – Music and other expressive languages, through the tradition perpetuated by the two brotherhoods they become cultural expression of a territory.

The path, which arises from the wise and creative manipulation of natural materials by the Signurara and Madunnara, gives life to splendid and enormous architectural artifacts, to a vegetal architecture rich in decorative and aesthetic elements that characterize the devotional nature of the event, reeds, willow, olive branches, rosemary, laurel, oranges, are transformed into cathedrals, into colonnades. Bread, eggs, sugar, salt are at the origins of most of the decorations that pass on the symbolisms that build the event: almonds, ears, maize, dates, flowers and legumes make up the materials that skilled and virtuous hands transform into “nimpe” and mosaics that accompany the joyful happening of the party.

Text and photos from the web