ABSTRACT
The 'Grand Tour' of Italy was an essential item in the cultural formation of every young Northern gentleman from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The main itinerary covered Northern Italy down to Rome: Naples and the South were much more rarely visited, and normally as an extension to the Roman part of the trip, usually out of some particular curiosity. Franco Mancini's adoption of a clear distinction between civil and religious festivities, and fixed and occasional ones, is straightforward but too rigid. This chapter follows Bouchard, surveying the annual calendar of Neapolitan celebrations in both categories, examining the main festivals diachronically. Bouchard left Naples with his companions at the beginning of November, but fortunately enough the main festive events of the successive weeks can be followed by way of another contemporary source. In 1632 the feast of the Immacolata Concezione was judged memorable by the compiler of the Etiquetas of the viceregal court, Jose Raneo.
