{"id":32661,"date":"2015-02-07T12:02:40","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T12:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/?p=32661"},"modified":"2021-02-13T11:27:41","modified_gmt":"2021-02-13T11:27:41","slug":"celebrate-valentines-day-with-battle-of-the-oranges-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/events-festivals\/celebrate-valentines-day-with-battle-of-the-oranges-2015.htm","title":{"rendered":"Celebrate Valentine’s Day with Battle of the Oranges, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Every year, from the 14th<\/sup>\u00a0to 17th<\/sup>\u00a0of February, the historic tradition of the Battle of Oranges comes alive in the small city of Ivoire. Everyone is open to participate by pummeling each other with approximately 500,000 oranges, a tradition rooted back to the 1800s which was fought with beans at the time (later replaced by oranges in the 1900s).<\/p>\n

With an interesting back story, this tradition draws in thousands of visitors every year to witness Italy\u2019s largest food fight. Book cheap flights to Italy<\/a> in order to participate in this fascinating yet ancient practice of the battle of oranges in Ivoire.<\/p>\n

Being a part of this activity is easy, as long as you are equipped with the appropriate headgear of red capes to show that you are a spectator. If you\u2019re standing right in the immediate vicinity of the stage of the guards, any rogue orange can make its way to hit the spectator. However, for the less enthusiastic, the battle can be spectated from afar in a relaxed safe environment.<\/p>\n

This four-day carnival is a reminder of the courageous battle between town folks (commoners) and a ruling tyrant. With its history as interesting as the event itself, it\u2019s worth finding out about. Legend has it that somewhere during the 12th<\/sup>\u00a0or 13th<\/sup>\u00a0century, Ivrea\u2019s lord attempted to rape the daughter of a miller on the eve of her wedding.<\/p>\n

The woman took a brave step as she decapitated the lord and freed the town from his oppression.\u00a0 The aftermath left the people of the town battling against the lord\u2019s henchmen. Today, this unusual carnival depicts the very essence of this tale as it poses as a reaction of the town people towards the lord\u2019s followers.<\/p>\n

Even today, the battle takes place among the city\u2019s main squares, with teams adorning cats depicting the lord\u2019s guards and an army of orange throwers representing the rebellion. Overall, there are nine different teams, marked with their own insignias to organize their attack in groups upon the guards, who arrive in wagons trundling across the streets of the city.<\/p>\n

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The oranges are stockpiled along the streets in stacks in advance, brought in from the island of Sicily across the Mediterranean coasts. The miller\u2019s daughter is also represented by a woman wearing a white and red dress, who continues to throw yellow flowers on her admirers.<\/p>\n

Making its place as Europe\u2019s most interesting carnivals, it isn\u2019t one to miss. The event exhibits freedom, as the battle constitutes an incredible cultural and medieval heritage. This makes the carnival a national as well as an international event not worth missing out on.<\/p>\n

Accommodation for visitors has been made easy, thanks to the easy custom of providing beds and small rooms to provide space for as many as possible. Small pubs, cafes and a whole lot of restaurants serving continental Italian cuisine make their mark serving the very best Ivrea can offer. There are specialty shops marking specific merchandise like chocolates, bags, shoes and cosmetics. Concerning its history, Ivrea\u2019s claim to fame is its progress in the typewriter industry, represented with a large collection in its Museum of Technology.<\/p>\n

A castle, a cathedral and a church are some of the oldest landmarks in the entire region. If visitors are interested to witness the natural side of the city, its outskirts are marked by about 5 lakes surrounding different sides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bizarre idea for celebrating this Valentine\u2019s Day would be the great Battle of the Oranges, held from 14th to 17th of February in Ivrea, a small city in Western Italy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4321],"tags":[5386,5387,5683,5128],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-32661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events-festivals","tag-battle-of-the-oranges","tag-city-of-ivrea","tag-events-festivals-2019","tag-valentines-day"],"aioseo_notices":[],"fimg_url":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32661"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47376,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32661\/revisions\/47376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32661"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.travelhouseuk.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=32661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}