Characterized by an ancient religious fervour that is worthy of a bishop’s residence or ‘Vescovado’, Acireale is dedicated to the worship of Saint Sebastian. His saint’s day, on 20th January, is Acireale’s most popular festival. The festival begins in the morning, at around 7am, with the opening of the chapel in the Basilica of Saint Sebastian. Then, at around 11am, it continues with the ‘nisciuta’, the departure of statue of the saint’s image, which is carried on the shoulders of devotees who run out of the churchyard with it. The devotees wear a beige tunic, have a yellow ochre handkerchief on their head and wear only seven pairs of stockings on their feet. Some moments of the procession are particularly touching such as the visit to the old station at around 3pm, when the saint bids farewell to the train, commemorating an event during the
Great War, when a group of young ‘acesi’ left for the front and their mothers asked that the statue of Saint Sebastiano went to the station in order to bless them. All of the soldiers that left that day returned unharmed. At the end of the festival, in the late evening, is the ‘trasuta’, that is when the image of the saint re-enters the Basilica, still at a running pace. Inside the Basilica the treasure of Saint Sebastian can be visited.