The Feast of San Gennaro is an annual 10-day festival that took place in mid-September. This year’s festival spanned from Thursday, Sep. 12 to Sunday, Sep. 22. Festivities are located in Manhattan’s Little Italy on Mulberry Street to Canal and Houston Street, making it a total length of eleven blocks. While there is no exact statistic about patrons per year, the official San Gennaro website estimates that the yearly attendance is counted to be over or around one million guests.
San Gennaro is an Italian festival, but it doesn’t require a cultural background to celebrate. It doesn’t matter who you are; the shared interest is in the food. People gather to eat the renowned fried carnival food, drink beverages from vendors, stands, and bars, and enjoy the local restaurants in the area. Some of the most famous dishes at the festival are the sausage and pepper sandwiches grilled in front of people and the zeppoles, fried dough balls cooked in a hot pot of boiling oil and seasoned with powdered sugar.
Most of the stands at the San Gennaro Feast take only cash. Some of the stations will take cards, although cash is preferred because giving cash has been a tradition since its beginning. Most stations took cash throughout the past, but some stations have accommodated festival-goers taking cards, and other digital banking apps like Zelle and Venmo.
Amaya Lakhram, a Junior majoring in business is the University’s Commuter Student organization’s creative director, gives insight into the staple San Gennaro meals, “ I looked online, and the big hit was the fried zeppoles. Since I love fried food, I had to try it out.”
There are also carnival rides on Grand Street if you prefer the street amusement park side to the festival. The festival’s Ferris wheel gives you a bird’s eye view of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, colorful teacup rides, whack-a-mole, and more. San Gennaro has a vast repertoire of games and activities to pick from and guarantees a great experience for younger guests.
University student Isabella DiMaggio, a senior psychology major and the President of the Commuter Student Organization who visited San Gennaro, spoke about their experiences at the festival. Dimaggio shared that San Gennaro was her first experience in Little Italy. “It was a great experience for me to be able to come to Little Italy for the first time. It felt like I was exploring my family history since I am Italian, too,” DiMaggio said.
The Feast of San Gennaro originally began as a tradition in Naples, Italy, but the feast arrived in America in 1926. The festival was a tribute to a religious figure named Saint Januarius, known as the Patron Saint of Naples, who protected civilians from natural disasters. The festival was brought to America during a turbulent time for Neopolitian immigrants, so the Italians changed the name to “Gennaro,” a more Americanized word.
The locals in the area of the feast are big contributors. There is a stand with a figure of the Patron Saint Gennaro where people can pin their cash on the walls next to a stand indicating the money will be used to support well-known local charities and organizations.
In reference to the pop culture scene, San Gennaro has been in popular films, one in particular featuring the feast was Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather II”. The feast was also featured in Martin Scorcese’s “Mean Streets”.
From its origins to what it is now, San Gennaro has truly become a popular staple in Italian-American culture. The mix of street fairs and restaurant cultures synchronized and created a taste of foods from Italy and all around the world. San Gennaro is more than just a yearly celebration; it’s an overall celebration of the wonderful foods and traditions from many different cultures.
