Carnevale

At Shrovetide all the world repair to Venice, to see the folly and madness of the Carnival; the women, men, and persons of all conditions disguising themselves in antique dresses, with extravagant music and a thousand gambols, traversing the streets from house to house, all places being then accessible and free to enter. Abroad, they fling eggs filled with sweet water, but sometimes not over-sweet. They also have a barbarous custom of hunting bulls about the streets and piazzas, which is very dangerous, the passages being generally narrow. The youth… contend in other masteries and pastimes, so that it is impossible to recount the universal madness of this place during this time of license….”John Evelyn, 17th-century English diarist

The origins of carnival in Venice go back to at least the 14th century, perhaps even the 12th, and may have begun with the celebration of an obscure victory over the Patriarch of Aquileia. People got in the habit of an annual meeting in Piazza San Marco. By Renaissance times it was official; by the 1600s, when Venice was in its decline, it became one of the city's money spinners; its length expanded continually, until it took up nearly half the year.