Every city in Italy has a patron saint who protects and defends its people. Italians worship and honor their city guardian on a daily basis, let alone on "his day". In Torino, that Saint is St. John the Baptist and Torinese celebrate his day on June 24th. This is one of the biggest holidays in Torino and so we get to party big. :)
The celebration began the day before with a parade of traditional costumes on Via Roma (the street with most expensive shopping stores) and continued on to the evening at Piazza Castello (come on, you should be familiar with this piazza already). We were lucky to see the parade up front and personal on Via Roma because we heard drums and trumpets from our apartment (only 1 block away). We ran down as quickly as we could with cameras in hand. Here are the results of our effort (please note that Torino's temperature has been 30C+ for the past week or so... yes, very very hot! :()
Later in the evening (~ 9:30pm), we met up with our Mandarin-speaking Italian Friends, Simone and Giorgia, to go see the bonfire in Piazza Castello. The significance of the bonfire was to see which way the big torch falls. If it falls towards the palace, then it is good luck for the year. But if it falls the other way (towards the train station - Porta Nuova), then... well, you know. Can anyone guess which way the torch fell? The first person who emails me the correct answer will receive an autographed postcard from me and Syd. :p
After watching the bonfire, we went to Piazza Vittorio for the free pop concert. By the way, Syd and I both were speaking Italian with our friends (though I mixed a lot of English words in the conversation.) Many people were already at the piazza (11pm). We could only get to the right side of the stage but we were able to see the performers on a big TV screen. It was quite an experience to listen to different styles of Italian music. A female rock singer opened the concert with high energy. Though I couldn't understand the lyrics, I could feel her POWER! Then Mario Rozini (my favorite performer for the night), sang beautiful and romantic Jazz songs accompanied by his smooth piano playing. The Italian language is already musical... just imagine it with actual music. Jazzy music. I have to purchase Rozini's latest CD soon. Giorgia got very excited when the host announced an older gentleman (Giorgia: mi dispiace non recordo suo nome :(). His music style consists meaningful lyrics and folk-like melodies. I liked the meaning of one of the songs. It was about destiny... how a man was trying to run away from death on his horse yet still ended up meeting it in the next town.We didn't get home until after midnight and this has became a long blog. I'll have to tell you guys the celebration on the actual holiday in the next blog instead. Stay tuned for part II.
No comments:
Post a Comment