Ferragosto - more than a day

Once upon a time, a large capital city known for its glorious past, would shut-down for an entire month. That's right: the whole month!  And in the middle of that month was a day: a holiday. This was the day of Ferragosto, on the 15th of August. It also happened to coincide with a major event in the Catholic calendar: the Assumption of Mary.

I was yet again stuck in Rome for Ferragosto. As I left my flat to walk the dog I noted that the small supermarket at the foot of the building was open, so was another one up the road. I crossed over the Via Cristoforo Colombo, one of the large arteries in and out of Rome, and saw that it was busy.

 During my walk I remembered my first Ferragosto. It had been almost surreal. Not a soul on the streets, empy car parks, all shops and supermarkets closed, maybe a bar open, the kind that has five bottles of alcohol half empty on a dusty shelf with an aging coffee machine and glasses so old that no matter how often they are cleaned they remain cloudy with the patina of eons of lime scale. It was so silent I could hear the mosquitoes buzz.

Today was a different affair. In the age of austerity, people can no longer afford month long breaks. Supermarkets and grocery stores were open. Bars were doing business. People were about. And those cars on the Colombo, were full of people heading to the beach for their one day off. The sixteenth they would be back in the office.

The Ferriae Augusti (Festivals of the Emperor Augustus) date back to ancient times. These festivals celebrated the end of harvest, the vinalia for the grape harvest and the Consualia in honour of harvest and stored grain, and it provided a long period of rest known as the Augustali. Hence August became the holiday month.

The tradition of going on a trip over Ferragosto arose under the fascist regime. Citizens of a lower social class were give the possibility of one-day or three-day trips either to the sea, the mountains or a cultural city such as Florence or Rome. For many it would have been the first time they got to go out of their home town.

New bridge, Garbatella, Ferragosto

Nowadays, while the children still get their three months summer holidays, from the first days of June til around the tenth of September, a challenge for any parent trying to find ways of keeping them busy, most adults cannot afford more than a couple of weeks. The off-spring are farmed out to grand-parents and summer camps, the parents meet them at weekends and over Ferragosto most will take their holiday, but for many who no longer have their summer retreat by the sea or in the mountains, it is a break in the city with day trips out or picnics in the park.

Of course, some like to ignore this change in habits possibly because it suits them to do so. The Roman public transport company, ATAC, maintains that once schools are closed for the summer they can implement their two-phase summer schedule, for which there used to be published timetables. This year at bus stops which exhibit timetables the unuseful sign has gone up 'line timetable being established.' I like to think of the summer scheduling as: first phase: buses leave when drivers want to drive them; second phase, in August: who knows when the bus'll turn up. As one bus driver wryly put it: "unfortunately most of the 'dirigente' (managers) still think we're in the sixties. They see no need to change things."

Once upon a time, Romans could afford to take a month off. Today, even taking the day off for some has become difficult, though others still maintain that Ferragosto lasts at least a week.