Fish Festival

Traditions and events · Termoli

Fish Festival is held every year on the last Sunday of August and celebrates the union of the inhabitants with the sea, a source of maintenance for many families in the city. The Fish Festival is an event that has very ancient origins and since its first edition is held in the port of Termoli, near the port master’s office. This area is set up for the occasion with long tables and wooden benches.

The festive atmosphere of Fish Festival is already animate in the afternoon, when workmen and the first curious tourists starts to go, but it begins to fry when get dark.

Once there were two enormous frying pans, sartagne in dialect, right in the center of the square, filled with oil and checked by a group of boys; when the oil arrives to the right temperature, the fish was then added and extracted to be served still hot.

Today, in agreement with hygiene rules, fish is prepared in numerous electric fryers filled with extra virgin olive oil strictly coming from Molise hills. The fish fried, which is mostly composed by the very good red mullets, squids and cods of the Adriatic sea, is served in disposable bowls and consumed very hot at the tables. Obviously, the fish used is fresh and specifically caught by the fishermen the day before the event. There are also the stands of beer, drunk to face the heat of the summer evening.

The port, in this night of the year, becomes a meeting place where hundreds of people go there just for a walk through the stalls or for the musical performance that each year is made by a famous singer or band in the Italian music scene. At midnight, the first shot announces the beginning of the fireworks. Even from National Course and the old village, people go down to the Port or sit on the ancient walls of Belvedere Tower to attend the fireworks that illuminate the last night of the summer holiday.


Address

Termoli - Piazzale del Porto

Site is visitable and accessible
Opening time

Once a year, end August.

Useful links

Video Youtube of Celebration