Articles and Stories

February 3, 2017

Have you ever heard of the “Tomatina” in Spain? It claims to be the world’s largest food fight festival, where towards the end of August over-ripe tomatoes are thrown in the streets and at everything and at everybody. Well, Italy has something similar each year at carnival, it is called The Orange Battle.

This battle lasts three days and takes place in Ivrea’s historic old town in the main square. Ivrea lies about 30m south of the City of Turin, in the north west of Italy.

The main celebration involves about 3,500 local people, who are divided into nine combat teams, called ‘revolutionaries.’ These revolutionaries come together and throw an estimated 900,000lb of oranges at each other with considerable force. The celebration starts on the Sunday of Carnival and ends on Shrove Tuesday with a silent march to the solemn funeral that ends each carnival. At the funeral, the appointed ‘General’ of the city says goodbye to the crowd with this phrase in the local dialect: "arvedse a giobia a ‘n bot", which means "we’ll see each other on Thursday at one". Thursday refers to the next year when carnival starts again.

This Orange Battle only involves these revolutionaries’ teams. The town of Ivrea blocked off a few routes for spectators, but if you happen to slip on any of the oranges or get into the combat zone, you are considered fair game and will be violently assaulted with oranges.

How did this celebration start? The legend has it that in the 12th century the local count reserved the right to himself to the first round with any bride before the actual marriage ceremony. The miller’s daughter revolted against this custom and organized the townspeople to attack the count’s troops with stones. The revolt was successful! It must have also been fun since later this revolt was used to stage similar riots for rival gangs during carnival season, often ending with fatalities.

In early 1800, when Napoleon occupied the area and heard about this custom, it was ordered to only use oranges to avoid further fatalities. The name of these gangs, revolutionaries, also stems from the time of Napoleon, from the French Revolution. During that time Napoleon had ordered his men to all wear red bonnets to show their solidarity with him. Some of these revolutionary gangs still wear red bonnets during these orange combats.

Here is video from 2014 that shows the Orange Battle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjEJPeZedpM