The Feast of San Rocco

Every village in the Southern Italian province of Calabria has a patron saint. Every fall, the villages will each host their own feast, a huge day of celebration that brings back life into the towns and villages that have long been emptied by waves of emigration stemming back from the turn of the 1900s.

Gioiosa Ionica, sitting on the coast of the Ionian Sea in the region of Reggio Calabria, holds their feast every August on the 16th in honour San Rocco, who was venerated as a protector against the Plague in the 14th Century.