Games, Music and Public Entertainment in Medieval and Early Modern Italian Towns

From the medieval period through the early modern Italian states, entertainment took place in streets and squares as well as in churches, courtyards and courts. Ball games, songs, dramatic performances and civic celebrations brought people together, but they were organized in different ways: an informal game in a street was not the same as a formal match, a religious performance or a ruler’s public entry. The surviving examples, chiefly from the eleventh to seventeenth centuries, show how recreation could depend on local custom, seasonal calendars, organized groups and the use of urban space.

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Ball games between street play and formal competition

Ball games were played in open spaces, including streets and town squares. In Florence, calcio became popular among young people by the second half of the fifteenth century. Its precise ancient origins are uncertain: later accounts associated it with the Roman game harpastum, but the earliest written notices of Florentine calcio belong to the late fifteenth century, and they do not establish direct continuity from antiquity.

As the game became more organized, large squares provided space for formal matches. Giovanni de’ Bardi’s 1580 rules describe two teams of 27 players, arranged in positions. Fifteen corridori (runners) played alongside five sconciatori and seven datori, who were divided between forward and back positions. The object was to send the ball beyond the opponents’ end barrier for a caccia, or score. Bardi’s rules specified that a player could propel it with a kick or a closed fist; certain throws, including a ball sent above a man’s height, counted as fouls. Judges settled disputes, and the game restarted after a score or foul.

These written rules also describe the match as a public event with an ordered entrance. Trumpeters and drummers led the teams onto the field, whose players wore colorful clothing known as livree. Bardi’s regulations assigned judges and a provveditore, an official who helped organize the players and their positions. The rules allowed play in Florence’s Piazza Santa Croce from 6 January through Carnival, placing the competition within the city’s festive calendar as well as its sporting life.

A famous match took place in Florence on 17 February 1530, while imperial forces besieged the city. Accounts describe the game as part of Carnival celebrations and as a defiant display before the besieging army. Musicians reportedly played on the roof of Santa Croce church so the troops could see the event; a cannonball passed over the roof without causing damage. The episode joined sport, music and public spectacle, though Florence eventually surrendered later that year.

Popular play could also conflict with residents’ need for quiet and order. A Florentine inscription dated 1645 records a ban on ball games and other noisy activities near the Badia. The contrast between restrictions in neighborhood streets and carefully organized matches in major squares shows that cities did not treat every kind of play alike.

A printed board and the throw of dice

The Game of the Goose brought competition to a table. A Venetian woodcut published by Carlo Coriolani after 1640, probably later in the seventeenth century, supplied a coloured playing track on paper. Players added tokens and two dice. In the classic form they moved along 63 spaces, each throw determining how far a token advanced.

A goose space repeated the movement by the number just thrown, while hazards imposed penalties; the death space sent a player back to the beginning. Victory required landing exactly on space 63. An overshoot was counted backwards, potentially carrying the token onto another hazard. Chance could reverse a lead close to the finish, giving spectators and players suspense without requiring strategic movement choices.

Songs, performers and dramatic staging

Medieval performance took several forms. Some dramatized parts of Catholic liturgies; others relied on itinerant singers, troubadours and jesters. These performers sang in the vernacular on subjects such as love and satire, sometimes accompanying themselves on a lute. Their work did not generally depend on elaborate scenery: performers’ voices, actions and words carried the story to listeners in streets, at festivals and in courtly settings.

Religious plays could use more elaborate staging. From the fifteenth century, sacred representations developed in Tuscany, where performances could take place outside church buildings, in churchyards, squares and streets. Texts might be in Latin or the vernacular, and painted scenery helped audiences recognize the places represented. Surviving records offer glimpses of the practical resources involved. An inventory associated with the Brotherhood of Saint Dominic in Perugia lists items including shirts, gloves, cassocks, wigs and masks, materials that could help performers take on dramatic roles.

Music also formed part of organized public events beyond drama. In Bardi’s description of Florentine calcio, trumpets and drums accompanied the teams’ entrance. In the account of the 1530 match, musicians helped turn a sporting contest into a spectacle visible to both the city and its enemies. Such examples show that sound could announce an event, accompany its participants and shape the experience of spectators.

Processions, banquets and Carnival

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Italian rulers used triumphal entries to mark arrivals and other public occasions. A trionfo could mean the procession itself or the decorated car that appeared in it. Vehicles were dressed for the event as triumphal cars, sometimes carrying figures of classical gods or personified virtues. A fifteenth-century relief at Castel Nuovo in Naples commemorates Alfonso V of Aragon’s triumphal entry after his conquest of the city. It provides an example of how a ruler’s arrival could be presented through a public procession and commemorated in art.

Displays could also be made for audiences at important banquets. In Renaissance and Baroque Italy, elaborate sculptures made of sugar decorated tables. These were temporary objects designed for the occasion, rather than permanent furnishings, and were eventually displaced by table centerpieces made of silver or porcelain. Processional cars and banquet displays used different settings, but both transformed materials and images into staged displays for an assembled audience.

Carnival, the festive season before Lent, offered another setting for public entertainment. Its timing and customs varied across Italy. Venice’s Senate proclaimed a public festival on the day before Lent in 1296, and the city’s carnival traditions later became subject to restrictions, including laws concerning masks. In Florence, Carnival provided the setting for the 1530 calcio match. Bardi’s rules, meanwhile, placed formal play within the period between 6 January and Carnival. These examples show how a seasonal celebration could provide a framework for games and spectacles, while local authorities continued to shape what could happen in public.

Urban entertainment therefore ranged from unscripted play to events prepared by officials, rulers or religious groups. Its participants might be neighborhood players, trained performers, musicians, members of a brotherhood or elite competitors; its audiences might gather in a street, square or banquet hall. Across these different settings, public entertainment made use of shared spaces and visible performance, while reflecting the distinct purposes and social arrangements of each event.

For the wider setting, see Daily Life in Medieval and Early Modern Italian Cities: Households, Work, and Community.