Le rievocazioni storiche, la ricerca dello svago e il regime fascista: il Palio di Asti e Siena

Abstract

This article analyse, through a comparison of two italian historical reenactments, the Palio of Siena and that of Asti, the strategy of using local history in the propagandistic and aesthetic sphere of the fascist regime. In particular, the work will focus itself on the rivalry that developed between Asti and Siena for the legitimization of their own reenactments, as rooted in continuous history. Asti’s recourse to the Sienese model involved a growing controversy that the regime resolved by conferring the monopoly of the term “palio” to Siena. The analysis aims to show how the model of the historical exhumation did not provide guarantees regarding the manteinance of its aesthetic content, let alone could achieve its educational-anthropological purpose by grafting on the community a series of lasting historical memories, symbols, and aesthetic apparatuses. The local community seeks, in historical reenactments, a passtime and a form of aggregation and novelty, quickly putting aside the whole ceremonial complex and the series of historical reminders inserted on by the local administration and organs of the regime. Historical reenactments, then, does not seem to be able to survive solely through the recovery of perennial historical characters, as the regime believed.