Marostica

After leaving Bassano del Grappa, we headed to one of my favorite spots, Marostica. This is an ancient city with old castle walls still standing as a barrier to the outside. The main castle rests on top of a hill, which you can see here:


It’s way back there in the distance. When I came here last fall there was a huge market outside of the city gates as well as in the square we’re standing in. I browsed all day and took in the gorgeous scenery - it was fantastic!

If you look behind where we’re standing you can see what looks to be a jumbo chess board. This “board” holds what they call the Game of Life, which is the story of the town’s history. The second week of September on every even year costumed townspeople become human chess pieces in order to re-create the medieval practice of playing scacchi to claim the hand of the kingdom’s most beautiful woman.

Here’s another picture of the Castello de Basso that stands in front of the chess game. We’re standing at it's entrance outside the city gates. If you look through the small doorway in the back you‘ll see the main square with the chess board:



From what Sarah's heard, the original story of the Game of Life is that the princess at the time fell in love with a commoner but was already betrothed to another. She made such a fuss about it that her father decided to challenge the two men to a chess game - whoever won got the girl. From what we can gather, the commoner won…or at least that’s what we’d like to believe :).