I Love a Parade!!!!

June has been (is being) a busy month for us. Summer has finally arrived in Rome and the skies are blue, the air humid and the Romans in their summer clothes.

Life was somewhat disturbed in Aventino during the first week of June. First, the Italian National Holiday saw the road past the Colosseum and Forum blocked with temporary stands to facilitate a major military parade. Then, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hosted a major conference – A High Level Conference on Climate Change and Soaring World Food Prices. This was frequented by lots of heads of State and big wigs, necessitating lots of security. So Viale Aventino was closed off for the week, the Metro Station (Circo Massimo) closed, buses redirected and the 3000 odd staff at FAO told to work from home.The “red zone” reached almost to our unit, so Cathy could come and go, albeit she could not sleep so well for the helicopters overhead. This didn’t affect Ian, who planned to be absent all week, so travelled to Washington DC with two colleagues. A week of storms, security checks, overly large portion sizes at restaurants and shopping. We three “did the malls” at night as well as any all-American teenager.

For souvenirs, Ian returned with a jacket, two pairs of Levis and a stinker of a cold.

But parades were the norm for the month. One Sunday afternoon, a somewhat spontaneous parade went past the bottom of our street – best we could make out, from the costumes and music/dancing – this was a Romany or Gypsy event. This group of people make Rome their home for the summer, so maybe that was just announcing their arrival.

We “holidayed” to Florence (Firenze) for one weekend – a town we had briefly visited in 1997. Spectacularly beautiful! Full of renaissance charm. And a town of parades also. Mostly led by tour guides with umbrellas stuck in the air. A very dangerous phenomenon – one needs to exercise extreme caution lest a gaggle of frantic tourists runs completely over the top of you.

But the weekend of our visit was the first weekend of the twice a year medieval football competition – games on Saturday and Sunday evenings in the arena (a sand-based stadium on Piazza Santa Croce). These games are living museums but involve considerable violence and more than once the tradition has been banned because of the blood and broken bones. Having seen the players parade, we can well understand this – built mostly like brick out-houses, these guys look “tough”.They formed the focus of an otherwise gentile and colourful parade through Florence en route to the arena. Perhaps best understood by a local, hundreds participated with very serious expressions, slow marching to slow-beat drums and with some variations, including a single but very nice cow, and four ancient cannons.

So, if you like a parade, Italy in summer is the place to come.

Next weekend, we join the parade to the north of England for a very special event – but more of that on the next blog no doubt.