During the days of the summer solstice, one of the most evocative botanical traditions of our region returns: the **Mazzetto di San Giovanni**, a bouquet of herbs, flowers and plants gathered and bound together as a symbol of protection, good fortune and continuity with the cycles of nature.
Behind this simple gesture lie ancient memories reaching back to distant times: ancient cults, Christian and pre-Christian traditions, rituals linked to fire and water, and plant symbolism layered over time. The session offers an interpretation of the ritual as a cultural trace of ancient cosmologies: a time when communities observed the sky and translated the Sun’s passage to its zenith into a tangible gesture, made up of plants gathered, woven and preserved. Elizabeth Visentin will take us on a journey between past and present, through the stories told by the plant species involved: from St John’s wort, mugwort, rosemary, lavender and other solstice herbs, each plant is a living embodiment of tradition, but also a plant organism bearing active compounds, medicinal properties, scents, colours and symbolic meanings. The bouquet thus becomes a small botanical atlas of the solstice: an interweaving of botany, ethnobotany, folk memory and scientific knowledge, where the common thread binding the herbs also evokes the invisible thread uniting sky and earth, ritual and science, ancient and contemporary. At the end of the session, each participant will be able to create their own St John’s Bouquet to take home.
ORGANISATIONAL INFORMATION
Date: Sunday 21 June, 3.00 pm
Duration: 2 hours
Difficulty: open to all adults
Recommended attire: comfortable clothing
Participation fee: free of charge thanks to the contribution of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region
Booking: compulsory via the website https://rogos.it/