Before living in Italy I’ve heard everyone talk about the slow pace of life here. While I understand the sentiment, its also not maybe exactly what you picture when you hear that… Because there is ALWAYS something going on right around you. Market days multiple times a week (which are different in your town versus the town 5 minutes down the road so you can probably hit up a local market every day of the week within a 15 minute drive) and now during the summer there are so many festivals!
This weekend some friends suggested heading a bit out of town (little over half an hour drive mostly because of the curvy roads up the mountain!) to a Borgo festival. Question 1 we always get – what’s a borgo? Little tricky to answer. Google says the direct translation is village but its a bit more than that. As I understand it, borgo’s are small towns but on the tops of hills so usually with their own castle (remember castles are for defense NOT royalty to live in), some homes and of course a church. Most of these date back to medieval times because once you’ve built a castle on basically every available hill, there really aren’t hills left to build a “new” borgo on!
After we parked to grab lunch, we got to walk by the “horse parking” section in front of the restaurant where some locals had ridden in to grab lunch as well. Then we walked up the hill to the castle, through the small museum to learn more about Matilde di Canossa (quite a badass woman), and back down for an aperitivo. Lovely way to spend a spontaneous day!
