Acquasparta and the Renaissance Festival

One of Less known and more interesting itineraries in Umbria passes by Acquasparta, a village that lives between spirituality and science, where the Renaissance Festival is held.
Umbria is land of medieval villages, walls, castles and fortresses to visit. Umbria, a land of great food and wine products, is a land of silence, where nature is sovereign, perhaps for this reason it is the homeland of spirituality. Umbrians are San Francesco, San Benedetto, Santa Chiara and others, but it is also a land of contrasts.
It is in fact in Umbria, precisely in Acquasparta (Tr), an unmissable stop for pilgrims who travel the Way of St. Francis, that science has left its mark, thanks to the presence of Federico Cesi. It was he who, at the beginning of the 1600s, gave birth to the Accademia dei Lincei, the first scientific academy in Europe of which he was a member also Galileo Galilei.

Itineraries in Umbria: Acquasparta and the Renaissance Festival

Acquasparta (Tr), which would seem to derive from the Latin “ad aquas partes”, that is the part, the territory of the watersan ancient city built on the ruins of a probable Roman settlement, near the municipium of Carsulae, overlooks the valley of the Naia torrent and overlooks the woods of the Martani Mountains.

The small town rises between the springs of Amerino and Furapane, touched by the Ancient Via Flaminia, it is one of the most beautiful villages in Italy in Umbria. Despite being a typical medieval village, it is the emblem of the Renaissance in Umbriarepresented by the architecture of Palazzo Cesi, around which the entire historic center winds, and the Church of Santa Cecilia, where the tombs of the illustrious Cesi family are found.

In Acquasparta the link with the Renaissance is so felt that it has been celebrated there for twenty-three years nowarrival in the city of the enlightened Federico Cesi known as the Linceo, who moved to Acquasparta shortly after his marriage to the young Artemisia Colonna, which took place in 1614.

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The Acquasparta Renaissance Festival

An excellent opportunity to visit Acquasparta and its rich territory is in fact the “Renaissance Festival” which will be held this year, from 10 to 25 June 2023, a moment in which scrupulous historical fidelity and strong involvement of the inhabitants will give life to historical reenactment of the festivities that the small community organized on the occasion of the arrival of Federico Cesi, one of the most significant figures of the scientific culture of the early seventeenth century, one of the first proponents of post-Copernican astronomy in Italy, a passionate student of natural sciences, especially botany.

The “Renaissance Festival” will open with the “Great Procession of the Contrade” entitled “Metamorphosis: the earth, the stars, man”, scheduled for the evening of 10 June.

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The districts of Acquasparta

The three districts they will then compete during the fifteen days of celebration, in various races that the public will be able to attend: the Gastronomic Competition which will see the elaboration of a Renaissance cuisine recipe that this year will have the truffle as the protagonist, an excellent local product, which has recently received the prestigious recognition of inclusion in the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage (Truffle hunting and extraction in Italy: traditional knowledge and practices).
The Great Game of the Goosea living revival, in costume, of the board game whose origins, in its modern version, date back to the second half of the sixteenth century.
Lat the Drummer Competition enriched by the show of flag-wavers, and the Theater Competition in which each district, with its own amateur actors, stages a free theatrical interpretation of a text written before 1630, reworked and adapted; in this edition the contrada companies will perform on texts by W. Shakespeare and F. De Rojas.

Multiple the collateral initiatives aimed at the public which will enrich the program, from photographic walks to discover the area, small and large animals, spontaneous orchids, typical shrubs and trees; to wine tastings in the Renaissance halls of Palazzo Cesi “In the glass of the celivago – Playful journey between wines and planets” a path that associates the character of each wine with the discovery of the characters of the planets; to theatrical and acrobatic shows with a Renaissance theme and with pyrotechnic effects.

There will be no shortage of gods moments dedicated to the little ones with “L’Accademia della Piccola Lince” a series of laboratories related to the theme of science and scientific knowledge which will be based on observation in nature and on the use of the microscope as an instrument of wonder and discovery.

Accademia dei Lincei in Acquasparta

On 17 August 1603, Federico Cesi reunited his friends from Terni Anastasio de Filiis, Francesco Stelluti from the Marches and the Dutch Johannes van Heeck in the family palace, in via della Maschera d’Oro in Rome, with whom he founded the Academy dei Lincei, so called for the exceptional acuity of gaze attributed to the lynx, taken as a symbol of the learned company of scholars.
Object of his study, in Cesi’s design, were all the sciences of nature, to be investigated with free experimental observation, beyond any bond of tradition and authority. This is the great novelty that has characterized the Lincei since their inception, the interest brought essentially to the sciences of nature and an attitude of respect but not of constraint towards the previous Aristotelian-Ptolemaic tradition, which the new experimental science sometimes called into question . The true ideological essence of the Lyncean association is expressed in the Lynceographum, the broad programmatic statute of the young nobleman, repeatedly subjected to the judgment and corrections of the other “brothers”. After the construction of Palazzo Cesi in Acquasparta, Federico “il Linceo” in 1604, retired disheartened and disappointed by the attitude of his father, intolerant and very little understanding towards the activities of the Accademia dei Lincei. Once the critical phase had passed, the four founders of the Academy resumed meeting in the halls of the palace and, after 1618, Federico established his home there.

The Theater of All Nature

The Theatrum totius Naturae, designed by Federico Cesi the Lyncean around 1615, was supposed to take the form of a sort of great historical-naturalistic encyclopaedia of the cosmos and at the same time make itself manifest of a new philosophy of nature (Speculum rationis).
Divided into various sections, from physics to cosmology, from meteorology to biology and bibliography, this grandiose work could not be completed in its entirety in Federico Cesi’s short life span. More than a thousand preparatory papers written by Cesi for his Theatrum were recently discovered at the Institut de France in Paris, which are still of singular importance today. Among these are the precious drawings of the “imperfect plants” studied by the Princeps. With this category he was referring to mushrooms, ferns and fossils, “mutilated” bodies which lacked the typical characteristics of other forms of life and which were difficult to classify.
These organisms were interesting mainly because they lacked a visible reproductive system with which to be able to explain their genesis. To investigate what he considered a mysterious secret of nature and life, Federico used an instrument he received from Galileo, the microscope. This “eyeglass”, which did not suit Galileo’s gaze, which was turned to the sky in those years, was perfectly suited to the research of other academics, especially interested in biology.

Palazzo Cesi in Acquasparta

Sixteenth-century residence of one of the illustrious families and prestigious Umbrian-Roman buildings and seat in the early seventeenth century of the scientific activity of Prince Federico Cesi II known as the Linceo and of the first Accademia dei Lincei. Acquasparta was the center of a feud which in 1540 Gian Giacomo Cesi and his wife Isabella di Alviano obtained from Pier Luigi Farnese.
The construction of Palazzo Cesi began in 1561 at the behest of Cardinal Federico I on the site of a fortress destroyed in the early sixteenth century during the wars between Todi, Terni and Spoleto and of which it uses the towers, the only surviving structures.

Carsulae, Archaeological Area

The archaeological area of Cars it includes the ruins of the Roman town hall, planned in the Augustan age, built on the sides of the Via Flaminia, near San Gemini and Acquasparta, places known since ancient times for their mineral water sources. The remains of the main public, civil and religious monuments remain visible to visitors: the Curia and the Gemini temples – overlooking the forum -, the basilica, the theater and the amphitheater, the latter along the Via Flaminia, which entered the city through the monumental Arch of San Damiano.
The urban section of the road formed the cardo maximus, paved with stone slabs calcareous and equipped with sidewalks and canalizations for water drainage. Funerary monuments are visible to the north of the arch of San Damiano, while in the opposite area is a thermal plant. Testimony of the spread of Christianity is the church of Santi Cosma e Damiano, obtained in medieval times from a pre-existing Roman building along the Flaminia.

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