The story
Queima das Fitas Coimbra in Coimbra
Queima das Fitas is the University of Coimbra's student graduation festival, held each May since the mid-nineteenth century. Graduating students symbolically burn the colored ribbons that once bound their course notes, a ritual now framed by eight days of parades, concerts and traditional black-cape processions through Portugal's oldest university city.
The University of Coimbra, founded in 1290, is the oldest in Portugal and one of the oldest continuously operating universities in the world, and its graduating students created a ritual in the mid-nineteenth century that has since spread to campuses across the country under the same name.