The Holy Week in Taranto unfolds in three successive processions. During the early afternoon of Holy Thursday, pairs of brothers (perdùne) set out on a pilgrimage with a slow and swaying gait called (nazzecate), from the Church of the Carmine to the sepulchres in the main church of the city where, especially for this occasion, the altars have been immersed in flowers and funeral ornaments in memory of the Holy Sepulchre of Jesus. Tradition dictates that the sepulchres be visited in odd numbers.
At midnight of the same day, from the church of San Domenico Maggiore, the Procession of Our Lady of Sorrows will begin, having been organised by the Confraternity of Maria SS. Addolorata. To the notes of the troccola (a wooden instrument that sets the pace of the procession) and by the moving funeral marches, the statue of the 'Addolorata' is paraded all night long in a symbolic quest for her Son, together with twelve pairs of brothers bearing a crown of thorns, in memory of Jesus's crown of thorns.
Late Friday afternoon marks the beginning of the Procession of the Mysteries (organised by the Confraternita di Maria SS. Del Carmine), characterized by a series of six groups of statues carried on the participants' shoulders all night long: opened by the players of the troccola accompanies the slow parade of the Gonfalone (black flag and symbol of the Carmine) the Cross of the Mysteries, the statue of Christ in the Garden, Christ at the Column, the Hecce Homo, the Fall, the Crucifix, the Holy Shroud, Dead Jesus and Addolorata. Accompanied by funeral marches through the quarter, the procession returns to the Church of the Carmine only at dawn of the morning after when, in a moving and long-awaited ceremony, the troccola player approaches the main door of the church and knocks three times with thebordone (the staff that he carries in his left hand), finally entering the church amidst the applause of the people.
