Everybody knows about Venice’s famed Carnevale. Is it masks, the costumes, or the lavish parties? This festival is no surprise to Italians. It begins with a smiling woman jumping off the bell tower in Piazza San Marco with nothing between her and the ground but a harness strapped onto her dress.
A staple feature to the Carnevale festivities each year is the iconic Volo dell’Angelo, and it is exactly that: a flying angel. Each year, a different woman is selected to be the “angel”, who has the honor of dressing up in a lavish, beautiful costume, being strapped onto a harness, and then flying down across the Piazza San Marco over the heads of thousands of onlooking people.
The event dates back to the 1500s when acrobats used to perform the flight without, well, much protection. Unsurprisingly, this led to tragedy in 1759, when an acrobat didn’t so much fly, but…well, Buzz Lightyeared. For a while afterward, il Volo dell’Angelo was prohibited during Carnevale. But, fortunately for us lovers of the bizarre and fun, it came back in the form of its current incarnation.
You can experience this emotion alone with a single flight, or share it with another person by choosing the flight in pairs.
On the Lucanian Dolomites, in the heart of Basilicata, it is possible to experience a unique emotion, the flight between the peaks of two countries, Castelmezzano and Pietrapertosa connected through a steel cable: it is the Flight of the Angel.
It is an adventure that will bring you in contact with nature and with a unique landscape, to discover the true soul of the area.
Once you arrive at your destination, you “angels” will return with your feet on the ground and, freed from the harness, you can reach the center of the village before and the departure of the other line, thanks to a shuttle.
And at that point, the dream will start again suspended between heaven and earth. The thrill of the flight can be tried on two different lines whose difference in height is 118 and 130 meters respectively.
The first, called San Martino which starts from Pietrapertosa (starting altitude 1020 m) and arrives in Castelmezzano (arrival altitude 859 m) after covering 1415 m reaching a maximum speed of 110 km / h.
The fishing line, on the other hand, will allow you to launch from Castelmezzano (starting altitude 1019 m) and reach Pietrapertosa (arrival altitude 888 m) touching 120 km / h over a distance of 1452 meters!
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