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Roman Carnival

If Carnival is an institution as old as the world, the Roman version must be as old as the city, and its celebration says a great deal about the nature of its lively party-loving people.

It is difficult to establish the birthplace of this festival celebrated all over the world: it may have begun in India and been brought from there through Asia Minor to the Mediterranean. The handsome Greek god Dionysus became the flaccid, florid-faced, almost effeminate Roman Bacchus. His curly hair wreathed in vine leaves and ivy, he rode a wagon, accompanied by satyrs and bacchants, across the whole ancient world, the center of one of the most popular and enduring cults of antiquity. In his honor, the ancient Romans instituted the Saturnalia, celebrated between the end of December and the beginning of January. Tradition traces the Roman Carnival back to these raucous festivals, in which young and old, without caste or class distinction, abandoned themselves to merrymaking and banquets. The first masks appeared during the Saturnalia. Behind their shelter, people reveled in the streets and abandoned themselves to every sort of behavior, including the not strictly licit. Cart races, orgiastic dances, wild animal hunts—all outlived paganism and are documented, along with orgiastic banquets, as late as the Gothic domination.

The moving spirit behind Carnival came primarily from the wealthier classes, since the expenses one could run up in preparation for the masquerades and banquets could be enormous. The people participated mostly as spectators, but also actively in many games and races. Often the old documents provide resounding testimony of the contrasts of life even in the great civilizations, like the Italian Renaissance. The same people who had their palaces decorated with the works of Raphael and Michelangelo could find amusement in making Jews run races naked, like animals.

Beginning in the late Middle Ages, and for many centuries to come, even bishops and high churchmen participated officially in the Roman celebrations. They opened their sumptuous abodes, embellished for the occasion by famous architects and resplendent with gold and works of art, dances, theater, and banquets without end.

Carnival lasted a different amount of time every year, but always coincided, by definition, with the period just before the beginning of Lent. The word carnevale itself means farewell (vale) to meat (carne).

Among the best-attended celebrations were the festivals held in the piazza then known as Agone (reflecting its ancient use as a racetrack), now Piazza Navona, and in Testaccio, where races were run, followed by all-night feasting and carrying on. In the Middle Ages, these celebrations acquired a character of official solemnity, as well as great political importance, because they were largely regulated by statutes. They were often attended by the pope himself as well as any political bigwigs, ambassadors, and illustrious visitors who just happened to be passing through the Eternal City at that moment—a sort of modern Olympic Games. In fact, the opening day of Carnival was sometimes postponed to accommodate the imminent visit of some VIP. The people and the various corporations (trade guilds) were also enthusiastic participants in the organization of what was considered “the biggest party in the world.”

A rare manuscript of the fourteenth century that recounts the organization of the Testaccio race describes how the leaders (known as caporioni), nominated by the Senate, went around to the various rioni, or city quarters, accompanied by a bull, to collect the offerings of food needed for the feast: “One saw nothing but hams, cakes, and pairs of provature, dry and fresh, good fiaschi of every sort of wine, reds and whites, and salamis and cheeses and pizzas of pasta de provatura, and tongues . . .”

The Roman Carnival achieved its maximum splendor in the Renaissance, thanks to the Venetian-born Pope Paul II (1464–71), who offered the people banquets that the chroniclers called splendidissimi. The tables were set up expressly for the occasion under pavilions constructed in the gardens next to the basilica of San Marco, decorated with precious vessels on which were served the most refined preparations of meats and fish and excellent wines. Important citizens and magistrates sat at numerous tables, while the abundant leftovers were thrown to the people who watched noisily and amusedly.

Often, after the races, it was the people themselves who sat at the papal table. During the Carnival of 1470, “His Holiness Pope Paul had races run, that is, those of the Jews, of men, of youths, of old men, and at Testaccio the other usual contests—both asses and water buffalo through the street of Santa Maria del Popolo to San Marco—and made lunch for the citizens in his Garden the Monday of Carnival.”

Contemporary accounts describe sumptuous triumphal carts and masquerades that crossed the city. They also detail magnificent banquets, including long lists of the foods that were served, and the “parade dishes” that cooks, true artists of culinary ephemera, created to celebrate the greatness of the hosts.

The “parade dishes,” already in vogue in the great medieval banquets, were the gaudiest manifestation of Renaissance cuisine. They were enormous constructions of food, cooked and mounted only to be displayed: for example, a cooked sow, dressed in her skin and surrounded by sucking piglets, or a peacock, again cooked, dressed in his plumage, displaying an imposing and extremely colorful wheel, while a flame emerged from his beak.

Beginning in the eighteenth century, theater became the great event of Carnival. But the parties and banquets did not give up their privileged position, even if customs gradually changed. At balls, the fashionable drink, the exotic chocolate, was served with pastries, and barrels of wine were distributed to the people stationed under the front door, though sometimes, to the laughter and the amusement of the guests, the wine was poured directly from the windows.

This is the moment when the most beautiful Roman palazzi opened up to parties and balls. Here is one account of the details of a ball at Palazzo Farnese held during the carnival of 1751:

At five o’clock was distributed the first sumptuous refreshment of every sort of water and fruit ices, cakes, biscuits, and other pastries in superior abundance to the numerous company and to the great contest of the masks; the ball continued and at eight o’clock were brought into the middle of the room various small tables laden with precious cold foods and various foreign wines, with a prodigious quantity of various pastries, whence those Princes and knights could generously serve the Princesses and Ladies. Nor was such generosity restricted only to the nobility, but passed to satiate the large number of the masks divided through the Gran Sala and in the Loggia. At the same time was opened a grandiose apparatus of a table, with Credenza,⁹⁶ raised on several steps, full to overflowing with an infinity of precious cold dishes with equal abundance of wines. . . . Meanwhile, the ball continued both in the noble Hall and in all the other rooms, and at 11 o’clock was carried in the third, similarly generous refreshment and, however, satiated both by the magnificence of the feast and the splendor of the refreshments, the masks began to make freer the step for the Apartment, where it was possible also to pleasurably enjoy rich playing tables and finally, at 12 o’clock, came the fourth generous distribution of chocolate, cookies, and other sweets, ending the great feast at daybreak, with the greatest and most sincere applause that could express the Nobility and the Masks assembled there.

The palace had been so sumptuously adorned for the occasion that for some days after the pope himself went to admire the decorations.

In the streets, bull races had long been replaced by barberi, famous riderless racehorses owned by the noble Roman families. The starting point of the race was Piazza del Popolo, where the stallions, cared for by special grooms called barbareschi, were paraded. At the signal, the horses were let out and ran down the Via Lata (the medieval name of the Via del Corso) to Piazza Venezia, between two wings of people who urged them on, while the nobles watched from the windows of the palazzi on either side of the street. The 1751 prize, won by the barbero of the Rospigliosi family, consisted of a gold brocade cloth in the fashion of the time.

At midcentury, the race was on among the noble families for possession of the best barberi to run during Carnival. And the victory in the race almost always preceded a distribution of wine and food to the people by the victor. The Rospigliosi won again in 1764, which was a year of great hunger, and the prince distributed large quantities of bread, in addition to the irreplaceable barrels of wine, for the occasion.

Outdoor games almost always ended with grandiose displays of fireworks, which the people watched from the osterias, where they were eating la tonnina con la cipolla (pickled tuna with onion), washed down with Castelli wine.

In the great palazzi, in addition to attending balls, participants played games of chance, such as bassetta, goffo, faraone, zecchinetta, and many others. These were the ruin of many nobles, who recklessly bet their ancestral palazzi and estates. The matter became so serious that the pope, Benedict XIV, was obliged to intervene with severe measures to keep the players, often high-ranking members of the clergy, from total ruin.

The Roman Carnival now makes us think of the flower of the European aristocracy, in whose honor parties and banquets multiplied, palazzi and courtyards were embellished in ever more costly and magnificent ways, transformed by contemporary painters, as fashion dictated, into idyllic scenes of Mount Parnassus.

From an issue of Cracas, the newspaper of the day, we learn that during the Carnival of 1784, in the course of a dinner hosted by the Venetian ambassador in honor of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Archduchess Anne Marie of Austria, the guests, “so as not to waste time changing the 124 dishes, [were] invited . . . to move to another room where there was another table.” This flabbergasted the guests, since the table was laden with serving dishes of gold and precious stones and with splendid antiques.

Private parties, banquets, and theatrical representations multiplied. Banquets were held in the boxes at the theater, while on the stage playwrights and musicians, from Goldoni, Metastasio, Ariosto, and Monti⁹⁷ to Cherubini, Paisiello, and Piccinni,⁹⁸ in whose operas women’s voices, finally, were heard, triumphed.

Feasts and “wardrobe” (alla guardarobba) parties—those at which only cold dishes and sweets were served—were held in the foyers of the theaters as well, most notably in the long-gone Alibert. Sumptuous meals were also served in the Piazza del Campidoglio, as had been the custom since the Renaissance, and it was a race to find the most prized ingredients to put on the menu, such as the trout from Lake Garda, which weighed twenty-six libbre, served at a meal at the Campidoglio offered by Don Abbondio Rezzonico.

The winds of revolution toned down the more garish aspects of the Roman Carnival. The horse races stayed, and those families who could afford it, even in a minor key, continued to organize banquets.

Then came Napoléon to threaten the papal throne. The citizenry waited with bated breath, and the Vatican diplomatic corps was even more nervous: it was impossible to think of stopping the wave of blows of the Napoleonic victories advancing on Rome. And when the French army, during Carnival of 1798, under the command of Joseph Bonaparte, took up quarters at Monte Mario, the pope, before ordering the clearing out of the fortress of Castel Sant’Angelo, thought to sweeten the enemy by sending him a gift of “40 bottles of wine, a milk-fed calf, and a sturgeon.”

But the temporal power of the Church was over. The Jews of the Ghetto, right in the middle of Carnival, in front of the synagogue, raised the tree of liberty accompanied with a generous distribution of free wine and refreshments.

The Jacobin feasts that were to follow moved from the houses of the aristocracy to those of the emerging bourgeoisie. Despite the introduction of new customs, however, the banquets were no less rich. During Carnival of 1802, Count Bolognetti hosted a banquet in his home to which, as a Carnival game, each guest was invited to bring a dish. This game was almost certainly the origin of the modern custom by which each person brings a different dish to dinner with friends. The dinner at the Bolognetti house enjoyed such success that it was later repeated and copied.

Money for masks flowed like water. The masquerade of 1805 made it into the annals: its theme was “the banquet of the gods,” painted and directed by Antonio Canova.

With the arrival of the French in Rome, and following a moment of stasis, Carnival resumed its old splendor, visited by ever more famous guests: there was not a king or emperor in Europe or the New World who did not travel to Rome in this period; and this time the doors of the great noble houses were open to the haute bourgeoisie as well. Barberi races and banquets were no longer restricted to Carnival, and on June 8, 1811, on the occasion of the birth of Napoléon’s son, proclaimed the king of Rome in his cradle, the French general Miollis, in charge of Rome, organized a barberi race and a banquet on the Campidoglio for 150 persons, chosen from among both the nobility and the bourgeoisie. In the evening, the dome, facade, and colonnade of Saint Peter’s were resplendent with thousands of torches, while a huge, luminous Catherine wheel lit up Castel Sant’Angelo.

No longer were the social classes rigidly separated and isolated to banquet in their respective palazzi. Rather, the nobles dined increasingly frequently in trattorias. Chigi wrote in his diary of a dinner held at the “trattoria of the Armellino, at the arch of Carbognano, 21 guests, 1 scudo and 65 bajocchi a head, including the women.”⁹⁹

The Carnival of 1816 was enlivened by the passionate performance of Il Barbiere di Siviglia commissioned by Duke Sforza Cesarini from the twenty-four-year-old Gioacchino Rossini, rising star of music. Success came at the second performance, as we learn from a letter of Rossini to the soprano Isabella Colbrand:

My Barbiere gains from day to day. In the evening all you hear in the streets is Almaviva’s serenade. Figaro’s aria “Largo al factotum della città” is every baritone’s war-horse. Girls go to sleep sighing “Una voce poco fa” and wake up with “Lindoro mio sará.” But what interests me a good deal more than the music is the discovery I’ve made of a new salad, the recipe for which I hasten to send you. I take oil from Provence, English mustard, French vinegar, a little lemon, pepper, and salt: beat everything together well and add some truffles cut up into small pieces. These truffles give the dressing a fragrance that sends a gourmand into ecstasy. The Cardinal Secretary of State, whose acquaintance I have made in the last few days, gave me his apostolic blessing for this discovery.

The Roman Carnival took place increasingly in the theaters and music halls, where Rossini launched Tancredi and La Cenerentola. After the theater, the old patrician families, ruined by gambling and no longer in any position to afford the parties they used to give, could enjoy the banquets offered by Principe Torlonia, the wealthy banker who had financed the needy scions of the great houses.

It was in those years that the governor of Rome banned the throwing of plaster stones in the streets, replacing them with coriander seeds covered with flour and sugar.

Political anticlericalism, which arose with the Roman Republic, was transferred to the table, and in trattorias the rage was a type of pasta that is still known today as strozzapreti.¹⁰⁰

With the coming of the Kingdom of Italy, old papal Rome disappeared, the number of inhabitants increased disproportionately, and new quarters were built on the lands of the great archaeological parks that had made Rome one of the most prestigious gardens in the world, encouraged by a building-boom bureaucracy insensitive to the charm of the old city. The races run at Carnival became increasingly dangerous because of the enormous influx of spectators, and fatal accidents multiplied, including one witnessed by Principessa Margherita di Savoia, the future queen of Italy, from the windows of Palazzo Fiano on the Corso.

In 1884, the races were abolished, and the old Roman Carnival passed into history.