On our journeys through Italy, I love stopping in little towns that may not be of enormous artistic or historical importance, but which offer something just as valuable: a wonderful glimpse of everyday Italian life.
A couple of days ago, travelling eastwards, we stopped at Marostica for a rather welcome break — an ice cream and a coffee on what was an incredibly hot afternoon. I had heard of Marostica before, of course, because the town has a very special connection with chess. Every two years, its magnificent main square is transformed into a giant chessboard, and a game of chess is played out with real people as the pieces.
What I didn’t realise was that we had arrived in Marostica on precisely the day of the great chess pageant.
The performances are enormously popular, and tickets are sold out well in advance — and, from what I understand, they aren’t exactly cheap. We certainly hadn’t planned our journey around the event, and we had accommodation waiting for us further east, so there was no question of staying for the evening performance. Nevertheless, what a coincidence to have stumbled upon Marostica on this particular day!
The whole town was buzzing with anticipation. Yet, remarkably, it wasn’t unpleasantly crowded. Instead, there was a wonderful sense of excitement everywhere we went, with local people preparing for the evening and visitors wandering around taking everything in.
The first thing that struck us was the extraordinary medieval town wall. It surrounds the historic centre and climbs dramatically linking the two castles that dominate Marostica: the lower castle in the town’s heart and the upper castle high on the hill above it.

There are also a handful of lovely little churches tucked away among the streets and squares. But on this particular afternoon, everything seemed to lead back to the chessboard. The preparations were everywhere.
I wandered around for a while and even tried to visit the chess museum in the old castle, but it was clearly not the right day. The entire place was being geared up for the great event that evening.

And, of course, this isn’t simply a conventional chess tournament. Nobody could predict how long an ordinary chess game might last! Instead, the famous event is a spectacular historical re-enactment, based on a legendary story from Marostica’s past, in which a chess match is played out as a living pageant, with the players and pieces represented by people in elaborate costumes.

We eventually had to leave and continue our journey, but we left Marostica thoroughly enchanted. What impressed us most wasn’t simply the famous chessboard or the pageant itself, but the atmosphere of the town — the friendliness of the local people, their obvious pride in their traditions and the excitement that was building for the evening ahead.
And then there were those magnificent walls, so beautifully preserved, linking the town with its two castles — one in the town and the other perched dramatically above it.
Who knows? Perhaps one day we’ll actually return with tickets and see the famous game of living chess for ourselves.
But what an extraordinary coincidence that, without knowing it, we had arrived in Marostica on the very day when, once every two years, the town comes alive and turns its great square into a gigantic chessboard.
Sometimes the best discoveries on a journey through Italy are the ones you never planned to make.

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