Ruzzolone, the Easter Cheese Race

Cheese rolling. An Easter classic? Bunnies laying chocolate eggs I almost understand. This very local sport really makes me wonder how it got started. It seems to be the slightly wacky offspring of a marriage between bowling and golf. And it seems to be a sport practiced only in Panicale. It takes place every year on the Monday after Easter, Pasquetta (little Easter), and is by the locals called Ruzzolone.

There is a course around the village walls. The team that "bowls" the Big Cheese, la Ruzzola, around the course in the fewest "strokes" wins. The Gioccatori wrap a leather strap with a wood handle around the cheese and send 4 kilos of cheese lurching wildly down the curving street. The cheese rolls, the crowd runs along side of it and someone marks where it wobbles to a stop with chalk on the street. When it stops on the street, that is. Being cheese, it is a bit hard to control and the pecorino often wheels off the course and starts bouncing down the hillside, through the olives, local officials in hot pursuit. Or the cheese will get wedged under the one Fiat Uno that didn't get the No Parking message.

The winner gets the cheese. Not that I know what someone would do with a cheese that has been rolled and battered around the covered moats of Panicale. Maybe they give it to the loosers. We did not stay around to find out. And if the cheese breaks during the race, si mangia! Everyone eats.

Way before cheese roll was finished the crowd had heard the band "music" off in the piazza and had wandered that way for the milling about, the free wine and hard-boiled eggs being served by the village Pro Loco committee. But, what a sight the bad band was. Worthy of a scene in a Fellini movie. They were named "Bandaccia" (bad band) and pots and pans and car horns and stuffed animals were involved, as I recall.

Counting the days till this year's running of the cheeses. Happy Pasquetta!

About the Author: Stew Vreeland is the artistic director of an advertising agency. Once a client of Umbria Rentals, he liked the area so much be bought a place of his own. He spends his time between Maine and Panicale, and runs the real estate website See You in Italy.