L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 12 L'Italo-Americano O n a w a r m a f t e r n o o n i n Offida, a dry clicking comes o u t o f e v e r y second doorway, dozens of s m a l l w o o d e n k n o c k s a t once, landing like rain on a tin roof. The noise is bob- bins, moving between the fingers of women working lace on a cushion propped in their laps, out in the open where the light is good. The village sits on a spur of land between the Tesino and the Tronto, at about 960 feet, s o m e f i f t e e n m i l e s f r o m Ascoli Piceno – and roughly the same from the Adriatic – and it holds around forty- five hundred people. Nobody is certain where the name came from, since t h e m e d i e v a l d o c u m e n t s g i v e O f i d a , O p h i d a a n d Aufida, and scholars have r e a c h e d v a r i o u s l y f o r t h e old town of Aufidena, the r i v e r A u f i d u s , a n d a R o m a n f a m i l y c a l l e d t h e Aufidii. There is also a the- o r y d e r i v i n g i t f r o m t h e G r e e k f o r s e r p e n t , w h i c h the philologists dismiss as f a n t a s y a n d w h i c h O f f i d a has cheerfully kept anyway. The town's handsome little opera house, all gilt stucco and a ceiling of Apollo and t h e M u s e s , i s c a l l e d t h e Teatro Serpente Aureo, the golden serpent, and the O f f i d a n i c a l l i t l a B o m - boniera, the candy box. T h e t o w n t e l l s i t s o w n b e g i n n i n g a s a f l i g h t : Ascolani running from the Lombards in 578, settling o n a d e f e n s i b l e r i d g e . Firmer ground arrives in 1039, when a certain Longi- no d'Azone handed the cas- tle to the abbey of Farfa, whose authority Urban IV confirmed in 1261, and for t h e n e x t t h r e e c e n t u r i e s Offida made a career of sid- i n g w i t h F e r m o a g a i n s t Ascoli. Gregory XVI raised it to a city in 1831. At the western edge, with cliffs falling away on three s i d e s o f i t , s t a n d s S a n t a M a r i a d e l l a R o c c a , t h e b u i l d i n g e v e r y o n e p h o - tographs, put up in 1330 by a master called Albertino over an older Benedictine chapel. Below, the streets open into a triangular Piaz- z a d e l P o p o l o , w h i c h i s w h e r e t h e l o c a l C a r n i v a l ends. The Offida Carnival is, in fact, one of the strangest in Italy, and it runs from the f e a s t o f S a i n t A n t h o n y Abbot on January 17 to Ash Wednesday. On the Friday comes Lu Bov Fint, the fake o x , a f r a m e o f w o o d a n d iron under a white sheet, carried by men and baited t h r o u g h t h e s t r e e t s b y a crowd in the guazzarò, the white tunic worn with a red neckerchief, until it is cere- monially killed. On Shrove Tuesday night the Vlurd are lit: bundles of cane packed w i t h s t r a w , h o i s t e d o n t o hundreds of shoulders and carried burning through the village to a bonfire in the p i a z z a , w h e r e e v e r y o n e dances until Lent starts. By 1612, a sales contract was recording twenty-five l e n g t h s o f O f f i d a l a c e s h i p p e d o u t u n d e r t h e t o w n ' s n a m e , i n a t r a d e already two centuries old by then. It passed from mother to daughter, and it is still going: there is a museum in Palazzo De Castellot- ti, a street signposted as the Via del Merletto, and a pro- tective mark for the genuine article. The museum's odd- e s t e x h i b i t i s a d r e s s t h e O f f i d a n e m a d e i n b o b b i n lace for Naomi Campbell in 1997. T o e a t , l o o k f o r c h i c h ì ripieno, a focaccia packed w i t h t u n a , a n c h o v i e s , c a p e r s a n d p e p p e r s , a n d funghetti, hard little sweets o f f l o u r , s u g a r a n d g r e e n anise. The sugar melts out of them in the oven into the mushroom shapes that give them their name, and the town granted them its own denomination of origin in 2 0 1 5 . T h e w i n e i s R o s s o P i c e n o , a n d t h e w h i t e g r a p e s a r e P e c o r i n o a n d Passerina, which locals will tell you are better here. T h e l a n t e r n s a r e deliberately sim- p l e a n d h o m e - m a d e : c o l o r e d paper stretched over a light frame, with a candle burning inside, and carried at the end of a long cane. On the evening of Sep- tember 7, thousands of Flo- r e n t i n e c h i l d r e n p a r a d e t h e m t h r o u g h t h e s t r e e t s toward Piazza Santissima A n n u n z i a t a , s i n g i n g a s they go. The date is signifi- cant, since it falls on the eve of the Nativity of the Vir- gin, whose feast is celebrat- ed at the church that marks the end of the procession. The tradition recalls an older journey into the city, the one that, from the seventeenth century, country people from the Mugello, Chianti, Casentino and the m o u n t a i n s a b o v e P i s t o i a would take, often during the night, to reach the fair held at Santissima Annunziata on September 8. They lit their way with lanterns suspended from poles, slept under the loggias of the piazza and, the f o l l o w i n g m o r n i n g , s o l d what they had brought with t h e m , i n c l u d i n g t h r e a d , linen, dried mushrooms and cheese, at the Fiera della Nunziata. T h e n a m e r i f i c o l o n a a p p e a r s t o h a v e e m e r g e d f r o m t h e w a y F l o r e n t i n e s mocked the countrywomen arriving for the fair. They wore their best clothes, but c i t y r e s i d e n t s c o n s i d e r e d them old-fashioned and con- s p i c u o u s . T h e t e a s i n g became attached to the word fierucola, the name of the fair, eventually evolving into rificolona. In Florence, the word can still be used jok- ingly for a woman consid- ered excessively or gaudily dressed. C i t y b o y s e v e n t u a l l y began making lanterns of their own, caricaturing the women they had seen arriv- ing from the countryside and parading through the streets with bells and whistles. For g e n e r a t i o n s , p a r t o f t h e entertainment involved try- ing to destroy someone else's lantern by firing clay pellets through a peashooter and w a t c h i n g t h e p a p e r c a t c h fire, a practice later aban- doned because of the risk of serious eye injuries. Today, a group still walks the roughly ten miles from the sanctuary at Impruneta to join the procession in Florence, pre- s e r v i n g s o m e t h i n g o f t h e original journey. What remains most rec- ognizably intact is the walk itself, the candlelit paper lanterns and the chant still shouted across the piazza: Ona, ona, ona, ma che bella rificolona! Colorful paper lanterns light up the evening during Florence's Rificolona, the tradi- tional September procession that leads children and families through the city toward Piazza Santissima Annunziata (Image generated using Adobe Illustrator AI) La Rificolona: Florence's feast of paper lanterns Offida, the village that works its lace in the street Piazza del Popolo, the heart of Offida, at dusk, with the medieval Palazzo Comunale and its distinctive clock tower overlooking the square (Photo: Flaviu Boerescu/Dreamstime) LIFE PEOPLE PLACES HERITAGE TRADITIONS

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