	Marostica


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Bassano Pics | Marostica |

I try for each page on the site to retain a certain significance, and were I to include a page for everywhere I’d spent two hours, I probably wouldn’t have time to write it all up. Places as nice as Urbino and as remarkable as London are markedly absent and not anywhere near my list of pages to add in future. Strange then perhaps that a town as small as Marostica, near Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto region of Italy , can make it onto the site when I only spent a matter of about fifty minutes there.

How so? Did I fall in love there? Did a UFO land and its crew offer to pay off my lingering student debts? Did George Lucas offer me a job co-writing the next Star Wars films (which I do expect will arrive within a decade or so)?

Er, no. I walked round town and took a few pictures. Clearly it’s a nice place, but I’ve been to nicer.

So what’s so special about Marostica? Well, nothing as such, other than that once a year they hold a giant game of chess on a huge board in the town square. Real people, real horses, although I’m not sure if the bishops have been ordained or if the pawns are XXX rated. It seems a fascinating custom, reinacted to represent the tussles between two lords of olden times and their lady, a medieval love triangle with a twist. Not sorted out with a game of nearest the bull, but by means of the more gentlemanly pursuit of chess.

Apparently, top players come from all over Italy to contribute moves to the spectacle and it was a disappointment that my holiday managed to coincide only with the period leading up to the games, as I left with but a few photos of some of the pieces, and the publicity canvas.

Italians like to make use of their idyllic town squares in style, from the orange throwing in Ivrea to the horse racing in Siena. Each town, certainly those in the centre stroke north, has its own way of paying tribute to the years that left Italy such a glorious array of architecture and traditions, and a passionate spirit that at times I still miss dearly.

Few other places could stage an event like this without it seeming out of place, I found in a near empty Marostica (well it was lunch time, in Italy) more than just a giant chessboard, rather, a whole culture still steeped very much in the memories of times gone by.

I don’t suppose this would appeal to everybody, it does to me. As you may know, I think life was better a hundred years ago. Probably.