Festivals & Expos

Visit the North End this summer during the Fisherman’s Feast

Boston’s oldest continuous Italian festival returns August 17 through 20.

The festival’s finale on Sunday night featuring the “Flight of the Angel.” Courtesy of Fisherman's Feast Boston.

By Natalie Gale

Event Link

http://www.fishermansfeast.com/

The 113th annual Fisherman’s Feast returns to the North End in August, honoring the long fishing tradition of Boston’s Italian-American population. The four-day festival, running from August 17 through 20, will see streets packed with food vendors and live entertainment — shutting down North, Fleet, and Lewis Streets to car traffic.

While Boston’s Fisherman’s Feast is well over 100 years old, it remains largely the same today as when it was first celebrated, with street food, music, lights strung from the buildings, and a procession of the Madonna through the streets of the North End. Food vendors will sell Italian favorites like sausages, calamari, pasta, pizza, and arancini, and live entertainment will include cover bands playing old rock favorites and newer pop hits, along with some traditional Italian music. 

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The feast starts on Thursday evening when the Madonna del Soccorso di Sciacca statue is brought from her home at the Fisherman’s Club to a chapel in the North End for the duration of the festival. The feast culminates on Sunday with a seven-hour procession of the Madonna through the streets, and finally the grand “Flight of the Angel,” where two girls dressed as angels recite an Italian devotion and a third angel flies down from a third-story window to meet the Madonna.

Boston’s Fisherman’s Feast began in 1910 when Sicilian immigrants, who made up much of the Boston and Gloucester fishing fleets, brought their traditions to the area. The feast celebrates the devotion of the fishermen from Sciacca, Sicily, to the Madonna del Soccorso (Our Lady of Help).

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