Saturday Nights in Ferrara are never Boring

Warning:  This post starts with me geeking out on local history.

Palio 2011, Ferrara Italy
If you squint, you can see the horses in the center of the photo

The Palio of Ferrara is a competition between the eight districts(St. George, St. James, St. Paul, Santo Spirito, Santa Maria in Vado, St. Luke, St. John and St. Benedict) of Ferrara.  Formalized in 1279, it is considered the world's oldest palio.
Originally it was organized to celebrate a military victory, but became tradition.  Though interrupted by war, and changing locations within the city, the Palio still takes place on last Sunday of May (currently in Piazza Ariostea).  The actual race consists of matches between the putti (young people under the age of 15), donkeys and horses - each of the four races with a representative from each of the eight neighborhoods. Besides the palio races, there is a month of celebrations, parades, races and competitions among the eight neighborhoods in disciplines such as flags and music.

Lots of folks dressed in period wear for the parade

Some of the parade participants were more entertaining

Eight days before the race takes place, there is a parade of the neighborhoods extending from the city wall to the castle.   We refer to this event simply as, “the palio parade” in our group, though there may be some much fancier and more historically accurate name floating around. 




Any way, enough history, eight days before the races, that's where we join the story.  We (being good tailgating Americans) packed up our kids, our bikes, lawn chairs, and a backpack full of prosecco and headed for some open lawn. 

The flag of Santa Maria In Vado
Purple and gold with a unicorn  What's not to love?

Our contrada (district) is Santa Maria in Vado and is centered on a church by the same name one curvy block from our home.  It is a historically important church because it was the site of the Eucharistic Miracle on Easter Sunday in the year 1171.  Yes, that is over 800 hundred years ago.  No typo.  Here’s what happened: a stream of blood sprayed from the consecrated Host, which stained the vault overhanging the altar of sacrifice. The church immediately became a pilgrimage site and remains so to this day. Oh geeze, there I go getting my dork all over everything again.


So we go to watch the parade and see our contrata being way more awesome than all the others...even though we have nothing to do with said contrata the other eleven months of the year.  I actually took video of Santa Maria's parade series, but I accidentally deleted it off the camera trying to take photos later in the evening. Oops.  There's five minutes of your life back. You're Welcome.


After the parade, we packed up our American side show of lawn furniture and empty wine bottles and mounted our bikes for home. The kids were out as soon as they hit their beds and by midnight we were all in dream land.


 Dream land.  That’s a nice place.  Sometime after four a.m., I woke up to Husband yelling over some inhuman sound, "KELLY! THE HOUSE IS FALLING DOWN! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!"  For future reference, I prefer to be woken with coffee, and at a reasonable hour...like eleven.  Perhaps in another life time.  "Bombs.  Maybe we're under attack", I thought in the split second it took me to realized that Husband was right.  We needed to get out of here. 


Don't let our shiny new bathrooms fool you, our house is old.  It was built between the 14th and 17th centuries. We do not have a single 90 degree corner, but we do have super cool painted wood ceilings.  Almost all the time I count my blessing to get to live in such an amazingly cool place...not during an earthquake, but most other times. 


The quake took our power with it, so we are running blind to get our kids.  Rutabaga was sound asleep over the less stable side of the house.  I hear glass breaking and that terrible growl as we assemble.  The kids are dazed and confused. I know we need shoes. Rutabaga won't let go of her pillow.  We grab our passports and bolt out of the house the moment the shaking stops.  We aren't sure where we're going, we just know our house is not our top pick. 


It's like a block party outside.  Neighbors we had never seen were standing in their robes and slippers holding their dogs or frantically texting.


The park - it's the biggest open space we can think of.  Yes.  Open space.  That's a good thing when surrounded by centuries old tall brick buildings in an earthquake.  Approaching, we see the outside wall, already reinforced with metal plates, has lost big chunks of bricks. And, it appears they lock the park up at night.  Oops. 

Rounding the corner, we come upon one of the decorative elements from atop the park's gate.  Ouch.  


Guess we should move on.  Where to?  In a clearer state of mind we agreed that the Wall would have been a safer place, but as it was, we went the other direction.  Chimneys and roof tiles Polk-a-dotted the street. 


This poor guy's head tumbled from a church niche across the street.

When we came upon it, one guy was trying to take it as a souvenir and another guy was trying to convince him otherwise. 




We rounded the castle and it was like an Apocalypse movie.

Five thirty in the morning and folks everywhere.  Sharing stories and information, we milled.  All of us.  Rex caring for his stuffed dog, JoJo, as well as any mother would take care of a new born.  Rutabaga still hugging her pink gingham pillow.  It was a scene from a Steven King novel...and I deleted palio parade videos and took pictures. 


After we stopped feeling aftershocks for a while, we made our way towards the medieval district, our home.  Stopping to exchange stories with a guy from work, and Fabio from our favorite pizzeria, we stepped over a remarkably small amount or rubble and made our way back to our still standing house.  Sleep followed shortly...for the kids.  Sunday morning we went out to check out the town.

The castle had some damage

There were a lot of cars that looked like this.

Some big things went boom.

There was a lot of police tape decorating the city. 


But, it really was amazing how little damage was here in town.  Our neighborhood had it's share of police tape.  But no one was killed here to the best of my knowledge.  


And for that, I suppose Santa Maria In Vado became the location of a second miracle...because it surely was an act of God that no one morted from this:

It used to be a pretty cool statue that was way up on top...right where that little open spot is

I suppose there is some super geeky physics formula that could be used to calculate the exact force a statue falling from that height would have.  I don't happen to know it.  I'm pretty sure in is roughly a shit ton. 

 
Kind looks like a unicorn.  No?






This is Today, a new day, and I'm thankful for it.

My house, still standing!