Fruit flies at Italian Carnaval

Reuters and CNN Correspondent Denise Dillon contributed to this report,
as it appeared on CNN.com, 7 March 2000

Ivrea Carnaval aftermath Wear a helmet if you visit Ivrea in northern Italy at Carnaval time. When folks there celebrate, they roll out wine, bands — and oranges, suitable for throwing.

Hurling oranges is a tradition in Ivrea that dates to the Middle Ages, when villagers took aim at an unpopular feudal lord and chased him off with a citrus barrage. It remains a treasured, if treacherous, part of the town's past.

"The origin of the Ivrea Carnaval is to re-enact the fight of the people against tyranny," one participant says. "But now we just hurt ourselves, drink and have a good time."

At least 50,000 people took part in this year's pelting. And as CNN's Denise Dillon reports, they got a bit heavy-handed.



[Back to the top of the page]




Valid HTML 4.01!Valid CSS!
Format, coding, scripting and graphics, except where otherwise noted,
by Giovanni dell'Arco, mka Jonathan Satcher.
If you have any questions or comments, please let me know!
On Target Online is published by and for the archers of An Tir, a Kingdom of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc. It is not a publication of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc., and does not delineate SCA policies.