Greek Carnival Ends with Spectacular Finale

The exuberant Greek Carnival festivities, cherished by both the young and old, reached their climax on Sunday as hundreds of thousands of celebrants across the country joined in the revelry.

The “Apokries” is the most colorful celebration in Greece with every region having its own traditions and ways of enjoying the holiday.

Patras Carnival

For decades, the Patras Carnival is the biggest and most popular by far. People from every corner of Greece flock there every year as they did this year. Even foreigners plan their trip to Greece around this time of the year to attend.

This year was no exception. Hotels and rooms to let were fully booked for the week as more than 60,000 carnival participants with 181 groups, surpassing every previous record, flooded the streets in the grand parades according to the Municipality of Patras’ data.

Despite the capricious weather, the Carnival parade was spectacular, followed by thousands of people in fancy costumes. On Sunday night, thousands of levelers continued to throng the streets dancing and drinking.

Carnival in Northern Greece

Xanthi, in northern Greece, also boasts one of the biggest and popular Carnival parades. Attendance is in the tens of thousands every year. This year locals and visitors ignored the cloudy weather and danced to their hearts content.

Xanthi has the distinctiveness to have a lot of Muslims from the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. A few thousand people from Turkey arrive every year to join the fan, while tourists from the neighboring Balkan countries tend to partake in the Greek Carnival.

The Carnival in the northern Kozani city had a more traditional tone, with locals dressing in traditional clothes and folk music of the area blasting.

During the season celebration there is a tradition to satirize and mock events in a funny song. It is called Fanos and the satirical song is sung around a fire. This year the “victim” of Fanos was the song by Marina Satti that will represent Greece in the Eurovision song contest. It was sung by a group of elderly men in the local dialect.

The Greek Island of Zakynthos Celebrates Carnival

Beautiful Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea – birthplace of Dionysios Solomos who wrote the poem that became Greece’s National Anthem – wore its Carnival costume and let loose in Sunday’s big parade.

As every year, the parade with Conte Carnavalos (Count Carnival) and all the groups and floats started at the arch of Agios Lazaros and ended at Solomos Square where laughing and dancing continued into the night.

The Greek Carnival is celebrated before the 40-day period of Great Lent called “Sarakosti”. It allows people to enjoy all the food, drinking and dancing before entering the 40 solemn days before Easter.