Italy Travel - Carnevale di Ivrea

Carnevale di Ivrea has been through several iterations in the 400 years since its founding. Ivrea, Piedmont today features an exciting orange throwing festival and battle rooted in the middle ages when feudal lords twice annually would give beans to the people who were of course all poor due to the Lord's largess. The people would then ceremoniously toss the beans out the windows and into the streets giving the lords the proverbial middle finger. Sounds fitting in today's environment of $1.2 trillion deficits. Maybe even a lesson in there for we post-modern sophisticates. If your Italy travel brings you to Torino consider a stop in Ivrea, where the people took control of their town in a renaissance of public and civic spirit and pride and re-engineered their carnevale to represent freedom from the shackles of the past and a celebration of the towns new urban identity.