Village Feasts
If you want to mingle with the locals in Malta, there is nowhere better than at the Maltese village festa(or feast).
The Maltese love their patron saints and the village festa, being primarily a religious celebration, is held in their honour every year.
Each village celebrates a different patron saint or two depending on the number of churches in the locality. Each church is dedicated to a different saint. For this reason, some villages celebrate more than one feast per year.
Every year, around 95 festi are held in Malta and 10 in Gozo
The day of the festa is celebrated all day starting with a march in the morning. Festa aficionados often get so drunk that they can barely make it home in the afternoon to come out and celebrate the patron saint in the evening.
The tradition of the festa started under the rule of the Knights of St John, specifically under Grandmaster De Rohan who ruled the order between 1775 to 1797.