The procession of the Jews in Pennabilli

A deeply evocative atmosphere permeates the town of Pennabilli on Good Friday with the Procession of the Jews, a sacred representation whose origin is not certain. As soon as evening arrives, the village is illuminated only by the dim lights of torches and braziers, and sounds and ancient chants are heard in the streets, conveying almost ancestral emotions. Men from the local confraternities wear traditional clothes carrying on their shoulders a 17th-century polychrome papier-mâché sculpture depicting the Virgin and the dead Christ. The procession starts from the Church of Mercy, continues along the streets of the historic center to reach the monastery of the Augustinian Nuns of St. Anthony of Padua, ascending the cliff that evokes the slopes of Golgotha. The clothes of the Jews take their cue from those of the Roman guards in Piero della Francesca's painting cycle - "The Legend of the True Cross" - in the Basilicata of San Francesco in Arezzo.