On the evening of Holy Thursday, the Battenti of Minori leave the church of Santa Trofimena and enter the streets. White hooded tunics, bare feet, ropes of hemp around the waist. They walk in procession through the night and into the small hours of Good Friday, moving through the town, into the outlying hamlets, and back again by noon the following day. The route covers several kilometres. It is completed on foot, without interruption.


They sing throughout the entire procession. Two tones, two confraternities: called 'e vascie (from the bottom), and 'e ncoppe (from the top). The chant has been passed between the members of the two confraternities since the fourteenth century. It has never been written down. It exists only in the memory of those who carry it, transmitted directly from one generation to the next, learned by ear and by proximity, not by notation or recording.


The Italian Ministry of Culture has classified i Battenti di Minori as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Italy - one of the few Holy Week traditions in Campania to receive this designation. The procession takes place every year during Holy Week, in the streets of a town of fewer than three thousand inhabitants on the Amalfi Coast.