Festa dell'Immacolata Concezione

This is a small and simple festival that could have come out of a book by Giovannino Guareschi, in which communists and priests might start fighting on the church square. On December 8, Muggia Vecchia celebrates the Immaculate Conception when a few, pretty stalls of flowers, old style games, candy and delicacies are set up around the old and extraordinary church (which contains many traces of the Romanesque past of this area). For the inhabitants of this lovely seaside town near the Slovenian border, this is a big occasion, a religious appointment with the spirit. Walking up the hill known by one and all as Muggia Vecchia that overlooks the modern town down by the sea, attending the mass and meeting friends and relations are like a tradition from times past. It is worth visiting, if only from curiosity.