In an ideal model, in Florence, Carnival has the witty face and intense gaze of Lorenzo de’ Medici who, around 1490, wrote the very famous carnival song dedicated to Bacchus and Ariadne, to be performed sung by a choir and accompanied by music: chi vuol essere lieto, sia: di doman non c’è certezza.

In Florence, the tradition of floats called ‘trionfi’ (made of wood and jute) allowed the days leading up to Lent to be celebrated in a lively, curious and crowded manner by commoners and nobles alike, while there was no shortage of masked young men of noble families who chased each other through the crowd, throwing a ball of rags at those they met or in the workshops of the artisans – to force the bosses to let the workers out to have some fun at least for Carnival, provoking astonishment and sometimes amusement in those who ended up involved in the game.

In the city, the game, in the form that is now known as calcio storico, was so widespread in the second half of the 15th century among young people from all walks of life that they played it in every street and square. It was thus that it was regulated and authorised in the major squares and – above all – during the Carnival period, when the rules of common living left room for the infringement of customs and traditions. The most famous and Florentine of the livery football matches was in fact played, according to tradition, between 54 noblemen, on 17 February 1530, who wanted to mock the troops in the pay of Emperor Charles V who had been besieging them for months. They played in Santa Croce, so that they could be seen by the enemy camped on the hills, the musicians played as if for a feast, and, although exhausted, they took the field proudly.

The chariot parades, parties and games were maintained during the period when the Lorraines ruled Tuscany: carriage rides, balls in the theatres (starting with the La Pergola theatre, where operas and comedies were also premiered for the occasion) and sumptuous masked reunions in Piazza Santa Croce were generally permitted in the afternoon and evening, while the theatres remained open longer and became the perfect place in which to hold dancing parties, which were also organised in private residences, in the palaces of nobles and foreign diplomats. And if in the halls the quadrille, minuet and gavotte were danced, in the squares and on the farmyards the music was that of the trescone, the carola and the salterello.

In the 19th and up to the 20th century, public balls were organised under the loggias of the Mercato Nuovo and at the Lanzi, and when the nobles and lords arrived, they too could become the object of laughter and jokes. The Great War, also for Florence, marked a moment of reflection and it was only after 1918 that the masquerades in the wealthy residences began again and the desire to dress up, as happened in Venice, returned, while the allegorical floats of the masked parades moved almost completely to Viareggio, where in 1921, the first parade accompanied by music took place on the Viali a mare.

But 19th-century Florence holds the palm as the home of the most spectacular carnivals. In 1886 and 1888, what had been the Ghetto for centuries (emptied of its inhabitants only in 1882) was transformed into Bagdad and then into a ‘Chinese’ city. Streets, houses, shops, even squares were laid out by artists and interior decorators and became a city within a city. When they were dismantled, the furnishings were auctioned off so that families in need could be helped.