Sagra Season Begins!

August is usually fairly dead because while you are staying behind and working, taking care of kids, etc., everybody else is out having fun a getting a fab tan.  But according to this article, August is the beginning of sagra season in Italy, where towns celebrate local products, local saints, and/or local traditions with good food and lots of dancing.  Realizing this, I promptly did my research, and found two sagre going on this last weekend: the Festa del Ciclamino in Fontanelle di Conco and lucky enough the Gran Gala de Baccala in the next town over, in Gomarolo di Conco.  Sagra season begins!

Palio di Romano

Every first week of May, the city of Romano d'Ezzelino celebrates the downfall of their most famous son with historical reenactments and a donkey race.  The town was the birthplace of Ezzelino da Romano, a 14th century podesta who managed to unify Verona, Vicenza, Treviso, and Padova before the Venetians, and despite numerous and powerful pressures from the Germanic states in the north, the Lombards, the papacy, the Venetians, and the numerous competing families from each city-state.  Despite his great contribution to Venetian/Italian notion of "statehood"--he was one of the first to really accept the possibility of neighboring Italian city-statesforming a unified nation--he was and still is a reviled historical figure because of his cruelty (but most likely because he was the top dude in a field of eternally competing forces: his negative reputation could be chalked up to the rumors spread by those seeking to replace him).  His death was a cause for celebration, and all four city-states threw a grand palio party before they went back to fighting each other.