Palio di Parma

After 2 weeks here, I'm beginning to feel more settled in Bologna, and so on Sunday I made my first foray into another Italian city: Parma. Unfortunately, this was also the day of the first rainfall since arriving here. But we soldiered on and trudged round the main sights; the park, the churches and palaces, a lot of monuments from the time of Fascist rule, and the, ahem, river, which turned out to be completely dry (unlike us). 

The highlight of the day however was definitely sneaking off from the rest of the group to find somewhere warm and dry to get food - wet feet has to be the worst feeling in the world. Four of us found a traditional little trattoria where we had lunch, and as you would expect from any Italian town, never mind the birthplace of Parma ham and Parmesan cheese, it was delicious. 

But the main point of the visit was to see the Palio, a medieval festival. It dates back to celebrations of an engagement in a noble family which brought an end to the in-fighting among the various families who wished to dominate Parma, and is a sort of friendly competition between the five areas of the town. Each area is known as a porta, named after the doors in the old city walls, and each team has its own costume. There are three races; for men, women, and children on donkeys (amazing), and then the teams take part in medieval dances, war re-enactments and rather a lot of flag-waving. Completely bizarre, but seeing as my college in Oxford has an annual ceremony of throwing coins at children from a tower, I decided to reserve judgement.

Something that took me by surprise was just how many people were involved; it seemed as if most of the village had a part to play, both young and old. The Palio is obviously quite a big deal, and the period dress was elaborate, as were all the performances - the flag-throwing in particular. At first all I could think of was Cheryl in Miss Congeniality "twirling can be a real art, you know", but, to be fair, it must take a lot of practice to be able to juggle six flags without any unfortunate flag-meets-eye incidents.