From candlelit cemeteries and ancient rituals to sweet biscuits shaped like bones, discover how Italy remembers its dead during Ognissanti and Il Giorno dei Morti.
Updated October 2026 | Centro Storico 21
By late October, Italy has settled into a different rhythm. The summer tourists have largely disappeared, the vineyards have surrendered their grapes, and the olive harvest is underway. Across Umbria, the mechanical hum of the abbacchiatori carries through the groves as olives tumble into nets spread beneath the trees. Woodsmoke drifts across the countryside, the mornings arrive wrapped in mist, and the hills around Città della Pieve turn shades of copper, rust, and gold. It’s a wonderful time to be in Italy, and one of my favorites, when the pace of life slows and the countryside seems to belong once again to those who live here.
But autumn in Italy isn’t simply about the harvest, truffles, and the pleasures of a new season. It’s also a time when Italians turn their attention to those who are no longer with us. As October gives way to November, florists fill their windows with chrysanthemums, bakeries begin producing sweets with rather macabre names, and families make their annual pilgrimage to the cemetery. While much of the English-speaking world prepares for Halloween with plastic skeletons, elaborate costumes and an alarming quantity of sweets, Italy observes two older and more contemplative occasions: Ognissanti, or All Saints’ Day, on November 1, and Il Giorno dei Morti, or All Souls’ Day, on November 2.
That doesn’t mean Italians are immune to a little Halloween mischief. Far from it. These days, you’ll find costume parties, carved pumpkins, and children demanding sweets in towns across the country. But behind the imported celebrations lies a fascinating collection of regional traditions, some centuries old, that reveal something rather lovely about the Italian relationship with death, family, and memory. There are wandering spirits, illuminated pumpkins, offerings left for departed relatives, and children who once believed their dead grandparents returned bearing presents. And because this is Italy, where even the most solemn occasion eventually finds its way to the dining table, there’s an extraordinary assortment of food involved.
The story of Halloween and the November festivals stretches back centuries, weaving together pagan customs, Christian observances, and regional folklore. The ancient Celtic festival of Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, a period associated with transition and the belief that the boundary between the living and the supernatural was particularly uncertain. Fire, feasting, and communal gatherings formed part of its traditions, and later generations would associate this time of year with wandering spirits and the return of the dead.
Halloween is often described as a direct descendant of Samhain, although historians are rather more cautious about that tidy explanation. The relationship between the two is complex, and many customs associated with modern Halloween developed much later, particularly in medieval and early modern Christian Europe. The name “Halloween” itself comes from All Hallows’ Eve, the evening before All Saints’ Day, while the Christian commemoration of saints developed over several centuries before November 1 became its established date in the Western Church. All Souls’ Day, observed on November 2, subsequently became an occasion for praying for the faithful departed. Over time, these religious observances mingled with older folk beliefs about visiting spirits, protective fires, and offerings of food.
One particularly charming custom was souling, practiced in parts of Britain and Ireland, where poor people and, later, children travelled from house to house requesting small cakes in exchange for prayers for the dead. Other traditions involved disguises, performances, and seasonal games, and it’s not difficult to recognize something of today’s trick-or-treating in these earlier practices. Italy, meanwhile, developed its own versions of rituals involving food, lanterns, and the return of departed souls, many of which survive in regional customs considerably older than the Halloween celebrations now found in Italian shops and piazzas.
November 1 is a national public holiday in Italy, dedicated to all the saints of the Catholic Church, both known and unknown. For practicing Catholics, Ognissanti is an important religious feast marked by Mass and prayer, while for many other Italians it is also an occasion to gather with family, visit the cemetery, and prepare for the following day’s remembrance of the dead. Shops, banks, and public offices may close, although restaurants and tourist attractions often remain open, particularly in popular destinations. As with many Italian holidays, the religious significance exists alongside the practical business of getting the family together, preparing a meal, and catching up with relatives who may have travelled home for the occasion.
In smaller towns, the atmosphere is noticeably different from an ordinary autumn weekend. Families return to their hometowns, churches welcome visitors, and cemetery paths become crowded with people carrying flowers and candles. There is something deeply Italian about the way these visits combine religious observance with everyday family life. A grave is cleaned, flowers are replaced, relatives exchange news, and someone inevitably comments on the weather or the price of chrysanthemums. The dead remain part of the family conversation, remembered not only through solemn prayers but through the ordinary gestures and familiar routines that have continued long after their departure.
Long before plastic pumpkins arrived from overseas, Italians had their own customs involving lanterns, wandering spirits, and offerings for the dead. In parts of Puglia, carved pumpkins known locally as cocce priatorje were traditionally illuminated with candles, their eerie faces associated with souls in purgatory. In parts of the Veneto, carved lanterns known as lumere were also used during the autumn season, demonstrating that illuminated pumpkins were hardly an exclusively American invention. These customs developed independently in different communities, often reflecting local beliefs about the supernatural and the importance of protecting the household during the darker months of the year.
Across Friuli and other northern regions, folk traditions included leaving water, bread, or a place at the table for the returning souls of departed relatives. In parts of Trentino, families were said to prepare their homes to welcome the dead, sometimes leaving food or keeping lights burning through the night. The idea was not necessarily that the spirits should be feared, but that they were visitors deserving the same hospitality extended to any returning family member. In some villages, church bells were rung through the night, while elsewhere candles and lanterns were placed in windows to guide the departed towards home.
In Abruzzo and Sardinia, children traditionally went from door to door asking for offerings associated with the souls of the dead, while in Sicily the departed were said to return bearing gifts for children. These practices varied considerably from village to village, and some remain living traditions, while others survive chiefly in local folklore, community celebrations, and the memories of older generations. What connects them is the remarkably consistent belief that the dead, although absent from everyday life, had not entirely left the household. For a brief period each autumn, the boundary between past and present was allowed to become a little less rigid.
Here in Umbria, one of the most anticipated events of the season is Perugia’s Fiera dei Morti, the Fair of the Dead. Despite its rather sombre name, there’s nothing particularly mournful about it. Quite the opposite. The fair traces its origins to medieval markets associated with All Saints’ Day, with a history traditionally dated to the thirteenth century. Over time, it evolved into one of Perugia’s largest and most popular annual gatherings, attracting visitors from across the region who come as much for the atmosphere as for the shopping.
Today, hundreds of traders fill the streets and market grounds with everything from handmade crafts, household goods, and clothing to plants, toys, regional delicacies, and the sort of kitchen gadgets you never knew you needed until someone demonstrated them. The smell of roasted chestnuts mingles with grilled sausages, porchetta, freshly prepared torta al testo, and the irresistible aromas drifting from stalls selling sweets and regional specialties. Families wander between the stalls, children make persuasive arguments for toys they don’t need, and shoppers inspect everything from leather goods to vegetable peelers with the seriousness of people making major financial investments. It’s noisy, crowded, occasionally chaotic, and thoroughly enjoyable.
The 2026 edition of Perugia’s Fiera dei Morti takes place from October 31 to November 5, beginning with a special preview in the historic center on Saturday, October 31. The celebrations extend through Corso Vannucci, Piazza Matteotti, Via Mazzini, and Piazza Italia before continuing from November 1 to 5 at Pian di Massiano, around Piazzale Umbria Jazz, as well as in the historic center. The fair also features exhibitors from Perugia’s international twin cities, offering crafts and gastronomic specialties from elsewhere in Europe and the United States.
For anyone visiting Umbria during this period, it’s well worth adding to the itinerary. The Fiera dei Morti offers an opportunity to experience a tradition that has evolved over centuries without losing its place in the local calendar. You may arrive intending to browse for half an hour and find yourself leaving three hours later with a bag of roasted chestnuts, a new frying pan and something entirely inexplicable purchased from a particularly convincing stallholder.
Visitor information: Umbria Tourism — Fiera dei Morti 2026
If November 1 belongs to the saints, November 2 belongs to everyone else. Il Giorno dei Morti, also called La Commemorazione dei Defunti, is dedicated to remembering deceased family members, friends and loved ones. Although it isn’t a national public holiday, it remains an important date in the Italian calendar, particularly in communities where generations of the same families have lived, worked and died within a relatively small geographical area. For many Italians, visiting the cemetery at this time of year is not simply a religious obligation but an annual act of family continuity.
The rituals often begin days beforehand. Graves are cleaned, photographs polished, candles replaced and flowers arranged, while cemeteries that may be relatively quiet throughout the year become places of activity and reunion. There is sadness, of course, but also a reassuring sense of familiarity. Families greet neighbours they may not have seen since the previous year, children accompany their parents and grandparents, and stories are exchanged about people whose names are still recognised throughout the town. In smaller Italian communities, where family histories are intertwined across generations, a visit to the cemetery can feel almost like walking through the collective memory of the place.
In some communities, the belief that departed souls return to visit their families survives in stories, food traditions and symbolic gestures. An extra place might once have been set at the table, or bread and water left overnight for unseen guests. These customs reflect older ideas about the relationship between the living and the dead, when remembrance was not confined to a church service or a cemetery visit but extended into the household itself. What I find especially moving is that these traditions make room for the dead within the ordinary routines of the living. Death isn’t treated as something that must always be hidden away or spoken of in whispers; it is acknowledged, remembered and given its own place in the calendar.
Italy has never encountered a religious occasion, public holiday or family gathering that couldn’t be improved by something to eat, and the commemoration of the dead is no exception. Across the country, bakeries produce an extraordinary assortment of biscuits, breads and sweets with names that sound as though they belong in a Gothic novel. Bones, beans, shins and even little sugar figurines of the departed all find their way onto the table, each reflecting the culinary traditions and folklore of a particular region.
These foods are more than seasonal curiosities. Many have been prepared for generations, using recipes handed down through families and ingredients associated with the autumn harvest. Almonds, walnuts, chestnuts, dried fruit, cooked wheat and warming spices appear repeatedly, reflecting both the agricultural calendar and older symbolic associations with fertility, death and renewal. Some are still prepared at home, while others are more commonly purchased from traditional bakeries, where they appear for a few weeks each year before disappearing until the following autumn.
These small almond biscuits are among the most recognisable sweets associated with All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day. Their name translates as “beans of the dead,” a reference to the ancient association between broad beans, burial rituals and the world of the departed. In Roman tradition, beans had connections with funerary observances and offerings to the dead, an association that continued to influence European food customs long after the arrival of Christianity.
Usually made with almonds, sugar and eggs, Fave dei Morti vary from region to region. Some are pale and delicate, while others are firmer, more colourful or flavoured with citrus and spices. They are particularly good with an afternoon coffee or a small glass of sweet wine, and you’ll find versions of them in bakeries across central and northern Italy during the weeks surrounding November 2. Their appearance may be modest, but their history is anything but.
With a name like Ossa dei Morti, you’d be forgiven for expecting something rather gruesome. Instead, you’ll find an assortment of traditional biscuits whose shapes and recipes vary across Italy. Some are pale, hard and crunchy, resembling small bones, while others are made with almonds, spices or sugar and develop a distinctive crisp exterior. They’re especially associated with parts of Sicily and northern Italy, although variations can be found elsewhere under similar names.
The idea of producing sweets shaped like human bones might seem rather peculiar to modern visitors, but it reflects a longstanding European tradition of using food to represent mortality. In Italy, where religious imagery has always embraced both the beauty and physical reality of death, such symbolism is hardly surprising. The names may be macabre, but the flavours are reassuringly familiar, and the biscuits are a reminder that even the most solemn traditions can accommodate a little culinary humour.
In parts of Umbria, traditional sweets known as Stinchetti dei Morti are associated with the November commemorations. Their curious name refers to the shinbones of the deceased, continuing the Italian tradition of giving perfectly respectable baked goods rather unsettling anatomical names. Local recipes and preparations vary, and these are the sort of regional specialities best discovered by asking at a traditional bakery rather than expecting to find them in every supermarket.
What makes these lesser-known foods particularly interesting is how closely they remain connected to individual towns and communities. Italy’s culinary traditions are famously regional, but often the differences extend to neighbouring villages, where a familiar recipe may have a different name, shape or ingredient. Discovering these local variations is one of the pleasures of travelling through Umbria in autumn, when the shelves of traditional bakeries offer a glimpse into customs that rarely appear on restaurant menus.
Despite its name, Pan dei Morti is generally closer to a rich, spiced biscuit than an ordinary loaf of bread. Particularly associated with Milan and Lombardy, it is made using combinations of crushed biscuits, dried fruit, nuts, cocoa and warming spices. Dense, dark and dusted with icing sugar, it is one of those autumn treats that tastes even better with a strong espresso, especially when the weather has turned cold enough to justify lingering indoors.
Its flavour is wonderfully old-fashioned, recalling a time when little was wasted and leftover ingredients could be transformed into something delicious. Recipes vary between families and bakeries, with some versions containing figs, raisins or pine nuts and others relying more heavily on cocoa and spices. The result is substantial, fragrant and decidedly more satisfying than its rather gloomy name might suggest.
Sicily takes the culinary traditions of the dead to an entirely different level. During the Festa dei Morti, children traditionally receive sweets and gifts said to have been brought by deceased relatives. Among the most distinctive are pupi di zucchero, colourful sugar figures representing people, knights and other characters. Then there is frutta martorana, beautifully crafted marzipan shaped and painted to resemble fruit and vegetables, sometimes so convincingly that you’d hesitate before biting into one.
The tradition offers children an affectionate way to remember grandparents and other relatives who have died, presenting remembrance as something that can include generosity, pleasure and even excitement. In the past, families sometimes hid gifts and sweets around the house for children to discover on the morning of November 2, explaining that they had been left by the dead during the night. It’s a custom that manages to combine the supernatural, family affection and an impressive quantity of sugar, which is a very Sicilian achievement indeed.
In northern Puglia, particularly around Foggia, a traditional dish known as colva or grano dei morti is prepared for the commemoration of the dead. Made with cooked wheat, pomegranate seeds, nuts, vincotto and other sweet ingredients, it brings together flavours associated with fertility, abundance and remembrance. The preparation has connections with older Mediterranean food traditions in which grains and seeds symbolised renewal, making it a particularly evocative dish for an occasion concerned with the relationship between life and death.
Unlike the biscuits and sweets found in bakery windows, colva is often prepared as a dish to be shared at home. Its combination of textures and flavours is unusual, with the softness of cooked wheat contrasting with crunchy nuts and the sweetness of pomegranate and vincotto. It is another example of how traditional Italian food can preserve cultural meanings that extend far beyond the ingredients themselves.
Not everything on the table is sweet. In parts of Piedmont, cisrà, a substantial chickpea soup sometimes prepared with pork, is associated with autumn festivities and commemorative meals. Elsewhere, families gather around regional dishes such as baked pasta, seasonal soups and roasted meats, often preparing the same recipes that have appeared at family gatherings for generations.
The precise menu varies enormously from one region to another, but the purpose remains familiar: to bring people together around the table. In many households, remembering someone begins with preparing the food they loved, using a recipe that may never have been written down or setting out a dish that recalls a particular person. These small acts of remembrance are perhaps less visible than the elaborate cemetery rituals, but they are no less meaningful.
One of the most striking things about living in Italy is the way cemeteries remain part of the physical and emotional landscape of a town. For visitors accustomed to the broad lawns and individual headstones common in Australia, Britain or North America, an Italian cemetery can be quite a revelation. Many feature tall walls containing rows of burial niches, each marked with a name, dates and often a small ceramic photograph of the deceased. There are family chapels, elaborate monuments, marble tombs and narrow walkways lined with flowers and candles, creating spaces that sometimes resemble miniature cities, complete with their own streets, buildings and architectural hierarchies.
Some cemeteries are beautifully landscaped, with cypress trees, stone pathways and views across the surrounding countryside, while others are densely arranged collections of mausoleums and burial walls. The monumental cemetery of San Miniato al Monte in Florence, for example, offers a remarkable combination of architecture, sculpture and history, while smaller village cemeteries possess a more intimate character. During the days around November 2, families arrive to tend graves and spend time remembering those buried there, and even the most modest cemetery becomes a place of extraordinary colour and activity.
The ceramic portraits are particularly affecting. Faces from different decades look out from the walls: young soldiers, elderly couples, children, men in formal suits and women photographed in the fashions of another century. There are people who lived through wars, economic upheaval and the transformation of rural Italy, their photographs preserving a moment of individuality long after the details of their lives may have faded from public memory. A cemetery becomes more than a place of burial; it becomes an archive of the community itself, recording generations of families whose names may still appear on shopfronts, street signs and doorbells throughout the town.
For visitors, these are places to approach with sensitivity and respect, especially during a period when families are remembering loved ones. But they also offer an opportunity to understand something fundamental about Italian culture: the past is rarely treated as entirely separate from the present. The people who built the towns, worked the fields, raised families and shaped the communities remain visible, their presence preserved in stone, photographs and the annual rituals of remembrance.
If you’ve spent an autumn in Italy, you’ll have noticed the extraordinary number of chrysanthemums appearing outside florists, supermarkets and garden centres as November approaches. In Australia, chrysanthemums are familiar Mother’s Day flowers, often associated with affection and celebration. In Italy, however, they have a very different significance. Here, crisantemi are traditionally flowers of mourning and remembrance, and their arrival in enormous quantities is one of the clearest signs that Ognissanti and All Souls’ Day are approaching.
Their white, yellow, bronze and deep burgundy blooms appear on graves throughout the country, bringing colour to cemeteries as the rest of the landscape prepares for winter. Their seasonal flowering has helped establish their connection with the November commemorations, while their durability makes them particularly suitable for arrangements intended to remain outdoors. In the days before the holiday, florists work at a remarkable pace, preparing pots and bouquets for families who will visit cemeteries throughout the region.
It’s a cultural difference worth remembering. Arriving at an Italian dinner party with a large bunch of chrysanthemums might not convey quite the cheerful message you intended, particularly to someone accustomed to their funerary associations. During November, however, they are everywhere, and their abundance transforms cemeteries into extraordinary displays of colour. There is something fitting about flowers that bloom so generously just as the year begins to fade, bringing warmth and brightness to places dedicated to memory and loss.
If you’re travelling through Italy at the end of October or beginning of November, this is a wonderful opportunity to experience a side of the country that visitors often miss. November 1 falls on a Sunday in 2026, with All Souls’ Day following on Monday, November 2. Churches, cemeteries and family gatherings will be central to the observances, while regional markets and seasonal food traditions offer visitors another way to appreciate the occasion. Although the religious commemorations are observed throughout Italy, the associated customs vary considerably, making it worth discovering how individual towns and regions mark these dates.
Here in Umbria, the Fiera dei Morti in Perugia is an excellent place to begin, particularly for visitors who enjoy traditional markets, regional food and a lively atmosphere. But I would also recommend taking time to wander through a smaller town, visit a local bakery and observe the quieter traditions that rarely make it into travel guides. In places like Città della Pieve, the celebrations are woven into the everyday life of the community rather than organised primarily for tourists, and that is part of their appeal.
Autumn also happens to be one of the most beautiful seasons to explore this part of Italy. The lanes are quieter, the countryside is rich with colour, and the smell of roasting chestnuts and woodsmoke follows you through the villages. Restaurants turn their attention to mushrooms, truffles, game and the first olive oil of the season, while the surrounding hills offer wonderful opportunities for walking and exploring. It’s a time of year when Umbria feels particularly itself, less concerned with entertaining visitors and more occupied with the familiar business of living.
What fascinates me most about Italy’s November traditions is their refusal to let the dead disappear entirely from everyday life. They remain in photographs, family stories, recipes, familiar names and the annual rituals of remembrance. A grandmother’s favourite biscuits are baked again, a grandfather’s grave receives fresh flowers, and children are told that gifts have arrived from relatives they may never have known. These customs don’t erase grief, nor are they intended to. They simply give it a place within the continuing life of a family and a community, acknowledging that the people we lose remain part of who we are.
Living in Italy has made me appreciate how much history survives in ordinary gestures. A candle lit in a cemetery, a plate of biscuits shared over coffee, a family gathering around the table: none is especially grand, but together they connect generations in ways that feel both practical and deeply human. In a country where family histories often stretch back through the same streets, houses and villages for centuries, the past is never very far away. It is there in the names above the shop doors, the photographs on the mantelpiece and the recipes that someone still prepares because their mother or grandmother always did.
Perhaps that’s what I love most about this time of year. Beneath the autumn colours, harvest celebrations and crowded markets is a quieter reminder that the people who came before us remain part of our lives. The November commemorations allow space for grief without demanding that the living surrender their pleasures, and they make room for laughter, food and family alongside the rituals of remembrance. It’s a generous way of looking at mortality, and one that seems entirely appropriate in a country where the past is so often present.
And in Italy, even the dead are never entirely absent from the table.
Buon Ognissanti e buona Commemorazione dei Defunti.
A curious adventurer living la dolce vita, creating insightful stories as a freelance writer, content creator, and printmaker, guiding you through the exquisite world of fine food, wine, art, and all things Italian.
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