Putignano opens its carnival on 26 December with the Propaggini, a night on which poets in the main square recite satirical verse in dialect about the year's local affairs, one after another, for hours. From that point the carnival runs continuously until Shrove Tuesday, which is the basis of the town's claim to the longest carnival in Europe.
The tradition is dated to 1394, when relics were moved inland to escape Saracen raids and the peasants left the vines to follow them, singing. The float parades are modern and compete with Viareggio for scale of papier-mâché.
No attendance figure is published.
The structural oddity is worth noting: a fixed opening date and an Easter-linked close mean the carnival's total length varies by weeks from year to year. The parade Sundays cluster in the final fortnight.
PlanningOpens on a fixed date — 26 December — and closes on an Easter-linked one, so its length changes every year.