Today, our last day of the tour, we travelled to San Pellegrino in Alpe. A bit chilly, we nestled together in a little cafe and had somo ‘cioccolata calla’ (hot chocolate) which is served very very thick – I needed a spoon.
We visited the Ethnographic Museum Don Luigi Pellegrini. It was full of objects used in every facet of peasant life, until the recent past, including spinning and weaving, which every household did for itself.
Peasant bedroom
Peasant Kitchenware
Peasant Cooking Facility
Forms for footwear
Old hand-forged keys
After lunch, we walk through the rustling beech woodland to open alpine meadows carpeted in genetians as we make our way up to the “Giro del Diavolo” – a legendary field of stones carried there by penitents.
It is a path in memory of the place where San Pellegrino resisted the temptations of the devil. In fact, pilgrims to the sanctuary used to come, and still do, to this place, as a sign of devotion and penance.
Legend has it that the devil, irritated by the resistance that the Saint opposed to his temptations, slapped him so hard that he spun around three times. From that episode began the penitential tradition, which consists in making a pilgrimage carrying a stone on the shoulders and depositing it in the place of temptation of the Saint, after having completed three times the tour of the field called, precisely, “Giro del Devil”. The size of the boulder was established by the penitents according to the sins to be expiated. Over the centuries the “tour of the Devil” thus accumulated thousands of stones carried by the devotees.
Making our way up
The Legendary Field of Stones – Giro del Diavolo
