Palio delle Barche at Passignano sul Trasimeno

Summertime is festival time in Italy and every week-end there are multiple options for the festival goer. Yesterday our plans to go to the Pievecavallo in Città delle Pieve were washed out but today we had better luck.

Passignano sul Trasimeno was our destination today for the Palio delle Barche. The festivities started this morning at 9.30 with a Patronal Mass and procession. We didn't go to the other side of the lake until about 2.30 pm as the next event, the historic parade, wasn't until 4 pm. It is always interesting trying to decide where the best vantage point might be when we don't actually know what will happen. Today we chose a shady spot which turned out to be the perfect spot. Once again the rione were competing for the honour of the palio. There are always several sections to the competition and today the parade was a part, followed by a small historic presentation, a boat race on the lake and a race carrying the boat along the street. There was much  chanting and team spirit and the locals proudly wore their rione colours.

Here are some photos from the historic parade.

For the boat race on the lake each rione had three people in their boat, a rower, a steer person ( Venetian style) and a female runner. The lake had become quite rough and the rowing looked like very hard work. As the boats rounded the pier there was a lot of jostling and once by the steps of the pier the runner jumped out with her flag and ran ...

Having been standing for several hours (with lots of waiting) we decided to head for home. The crowd was dense and we were battling our way through when we came upon the races with the upturned boats that involved 40-50 people in each team. One advantage of a point and shoot camera is that you can hold it above the crowd and sometimes get a reasonable photo.

A note regarding cameras: we left home with three cameras and unfortunately only have one operational now. My big Nikon had a hissy-fit on day two and Kel's little Canon couldn't take the pressure and has refused to open.