The San Giovanni’s Palio in Porto Recanati


Each year, during the third week of August, Porto Recanati adorn itself as for a festival and its districts pick the smartest guys chosen to run with fish set in “crow’s nests” like old times, to compete and win the “Palio of San Giovanni”.

A village like Porto Recanati lives on the history and the tradition connected with the sea, and the “Palio of San Giovanni” is focused on highlighting this seafaring custom.

 

Different from the other palios in the Marche, this one is clearly particular! In effect it doesn’t bring you back to the medieval times in which knights challenged theirself with lances in equestrian play games, but let the village fill itself with nets and “sciabbegotti”. What are they? “Sciabbega” is a dialectal term to name the boat used by the fishermen to go fishing, but nowadays fallen in disuse.


The Palio takes its name from the patron of Porto Recanati and it’s a remembrance of an ancient tradition connected to the profession of “sciabbegotto”.


We are over the ‘900, the protagonist is the final phase of a day of fishing: two “sciabbegotti” set the fish, after selecting it, in these “coffe” (italian name to describe the crow’s nests) supported with a cane, and the race starts! Paying attention not to lose the precious fish then sold in the street, the couple ran without shoes toward the market, trying to get there first and sell the merchandise at the highest price.




Even now, after more then 100 years, the citizens of Porto Recanati still care about this old tradition, trying to keep it alive to call back their roots and to honour the ancestors’s memory