Ascoli Piceno is a 50,000 inhabitant town in east centre of Italy. It lays on the east hedge of the Apennines’ massif at the confluence of the rivers Tronto and Castellano, there where the former’s gorges open in a fertile valley fifteen miles before the mouth in the Adriatic Sea.
The town was founded several centuries before the same Roma. In the third century b.C. it became Civitas Foederata (confederate),to Roma, but two centuries later Ascoli headed the Social War, a uprising of many towns of the Apennine that demanded the right to Roman citizenship. Roma settled the matter by her usual practice: first besieged Ascoli, stormed her and slew most people, then magnanimously conceded what had been demanded.
The urban frame of the town is the typical Roma’s, also there is a Roman theatre, but the architecture is more medieval. The Bridge Club is guest in a fourteenth century palace owned by the Circolo Cittadino.
The bridge tournament will be held in the same day of the Quintana of July, that is on 9th. The Quintana is a joust played twice a year since the end of the twelfth century. The joust is in honour of Saint Emidio, the first bishop of the town, who was martyred on 5 August 303 because he had converted to Christendom Polisia, the daughter of the Roman prefect.
The program: at 10.30 there will be a guided tour around the finest places of the town, namely Piazza Arringo, Piazza del Popolo and Piazza San Pietro Martire. The Bridge Tournament will start at 15.30 and will end at 19.00. After the prize giving, the players can go around the town, among ancient stones, to watch the thousand people pageant, dames, knights, pages, magistrates and others led by the mayor, who in this day dresses, walks solemnly and is called as in the past: the Magnifico Messere.
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INFO: assobridge.ap@gmail.com