Macchine di Tempo

A flyer I picked up in the bakery told me that the Maggiolata would transform the Piazza Santa Spirito for an evening and take me back in time. Naturally I had to see.

The Piazza was full of people, mostly kiddies. There were tables of food provided free by the local bakeries and grocers- miniature pizzas, little cubes of ham, tiny pastries, non-alcoholic punch, all totally delicious. Baskets of cherries were placed around the fountain. A small group with guitars and a tambourine started playing music that people clapped and chanted along to.

A few young men and women in costumes that were a combo of Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing and their own wardrobes were holding games for the kids. There was jousting with big sponge-covered jousty things, a sort of maze made of a spiral of rope with a ‘princess’ waiting in the middle, and my favourite, where a pair of kids was each given a scarf to tuck in the back of the waistband of their trousers – they then had to try and grab each other’s scarf. Totally simple, but the kids LOVED it, and the grownups loved watching them.