Festa Time
Celebrating Perugia's liberation with neighborhood pride
In Perugia, September 14 is an important date—it’s the day in 1860 (the year before Italy’s unification) when the city was freed from papal rule. And nowhere is the date more celebrated than in the street where the liberating heroes, the bersaglieri, entered the city through Porta Sant’Antonio. Now named for those heroes, the street is the heart of my borgo (neighborhood), which has the most enthusiastic, hardworking, civic-minded people I know. You want to learn how to throw a neighborhood bash? Take notes from the masters.
So who are the bersaglieri and what, exactly, did they do? They’re sharpshooters—in the case of September 14, 1860, a contingent from Piemonte—and a bit flamboyant. Their headgear (for both dress and combat) is adorned with large black capercaillie (a type of grouse) feathers, which originally served as both camouflage and as shade for the sharpshooter’s aiming eye. Light infantry troops that often fought in skirmishes and led assaults, the bersaglieri are famous for running in formation and responding to orders given by an array of bugle calls.
The historic date fell on a Wednesday this year, so most of the festivities happened on the following Sunday. But on Wednesday morning the mayor and other officials, plus a good showing of modern-day bersaglieri, took part in ceremonies at the cemetery, Porta Sant’Antonio, and other locations in which laurel wreaths were placed to honor the bersaglieri and their heroic efforts.
The bersaglieri didn’t work alone, though; a brigade of granatieri (grenadiers) from Sardegna entered the city as well, through a nearby city gate, Porta Santa Margherita, where another wreath was placed on Wednesday morning. Together the two factions succeeded in wresting the city from the control of the Pope’s Swiss Guard. It was a devious and brazen assault. The bersaglieri and granatieri knew the Swiss Guard, who dominated the city from an enormous fortress, the Rocca Paolina, on the other side of town, wouldn’t expect an assault on the city’s lesser gates—which happened to be out of range of the Rocca’s cannons. When the bersaglieri and granatieri breached the city, their victory over the Swiss Guard ended Perugia’s centuries of papal rule—and, I suppose, helped hasten the unification of Italy the following year.
With Wednesday’s formalities over, it was time to party. Okay, there was another wreath-placing ceremony first, and then a mass at the local church, Chiesa di Sant’Antonio Abate. Then the Umbrian branch of the bersaglieri gathered in the church courtyard before marching to Porta Pesa, followed by all of us revelers. After that, 150 people descended on the neighborhood meeting place for a lunch of tricolore pasta, wine, and torcolo (a ring cake, in this case like a pound cake).
After lunch and a short pausa, the bersaglieri again paraded down Corso Bersaglieri en route to Piazza Quattro Novembre, the heart of Perugia’s historic center.
In Piazza Quattro Novembre, the bersaglieri rendezvoused with the Sardinian granatieri for a musical face-off—not quite a fair sfida, as my friend Margherita pointed out, since the granatieri were outfitted like a proper band and the bersaglieri had only bugles and other brass. But the bersaglieri sang too, in voices bigger than their number would suggest. And anyway, they have better hats.
The core group of soci in our neighborhood association organized everything, from decorating the streets with swaths of flags, enlisting the participation of local merchants, planning events and menus, doing publicity, coordinating an exhibit of photos of the neighborhood coming back to life post-pandemic, and on and on—including waiting tables at lunchtime. As if all that wasn’t enough, there was a dinner that night for only the borgoroli, with one of the soci ringleaders as chef. (He makes a killer sugo piccante with peppers and sausage.)
There are celebrations like this one in cities and towns all over Italy, and my neighborhood isn’t the only active one in Perugia. But I gotta tell you, I’m in awe of what this dedicated group does. In the past ten years they’ve revitalized the neighborhood, fought to make the streets clean of garbage and drug dealers, beautified public areas with plants and flowers and trees, and petitioned (successfully) to get the streets repaved in a light gray material that’s close in color to the city’s original stone pavers. The area just outside Porta Sant’Antonio continues to become richer, with park benches, apple and pomegranate trees, succulents, lavender, and roses, to name a few, overlooking the Fosso del Bulagaio. The fosso is a steep, unusable piece of land that’s now home to an apiary and plenty of flowering trees and shrubs, thanks to these kindhearted and energetic folks, who help neighborhood schoolchildren learn about bees and pollination and include them in planting projects. Chiesa di Sant’Antonio Abate has become a lively concert hall because of this group’s efforts, with 30-plus concerts a year, for which programs and posters are made at the local print shop and posted by borgo volunteers. And from December 8 to January 6 each year, Corso Bersaglieri becomes Via dei Presepi, so called because of the many elaborate nativity scenes curated and maintained by this group. I’m sure I’m forgetting something else they do, but you get the idea.
This is my corner of Italy. This is the neighborhood I didn’t know I needed until I moved here. I’ll always be a straniera, the americana, but I’m proud to be a Borgo Sant’Antonio-Porta Pesa soci too. And someday maybe I’ll do more than tend the garden at the church and banish pigeons from their perch above the church’s gate.
Oh hey, as I was writing this I got a message announcing another borgo dinner to celebrate the end of summer and the resumption, after years of lockdowns and restrictions, of social activities. Good lord, these people are unstoppable! Party on!
Book of the week:
The Hero’s Way: Walking with Garibaldi from Rome to Ravenna by Tim Parks (a bit of a stretch, maybe, but on the “heroes” theme, so I’ll go with it).
Thanks for bringing me into Italy today with your colorful story of this fiesta !
Such wonderful information and images! So glad that Aria participated in the events, too. Brought back many memories of growing up in my northwest Denver community of Italian immigrants. Our August celebrations to honor St. Rocco were also magnificent. Festa on!