The undisputed star of the Persiceto Historical Carnival is his mask: Bertoldo.
Ingenious farmer who, together with his wife Marcolfa and son Bertoldino, was born from the lively imagination of the Persiceto storyteller and playwright Giulio Cesare Croce (1550 – 1609).
Thanks to his very subtle wiles, Bertoldo becomes an advisor to King Alboin, but court life will prove harmful to the good farmer, so much so that, without being able to eat turnips and beans, he will die poisoned by the refined court food.
The witty farmer will manage to avoid the death penalty by hanging, which the King had inflicted on him in an instant of anger, asking, as his last wish, to be able to choose the tree where he can then be hanged.
So he leaves for the woods with the soldiers who were then supposed to carry out the sentence.
After a few days he is seen returning, with the same soldiers, explaining to King Alboin that Berthold had indeed found the tree to be hanged from, but they had not managed to hang him; at this point Bertold advances holding a tiny tree shoot and tells the King. “We wait for him to grow up!”
Emblem of that peasant ingenuity sharpened by necessity, Bertoldo, with his ramshackle family, fits into an important strand of Italian culture; in that literary genre defined as carnivalesque and, the carnival itself, here in Persiceto, boasts a tradition spanning over a hundred years, as well as an element that makes it unique:

“THE PIN”

The allegorical floats, which parade through the centre, on the first Sunday of the masked courses, when they arrive in the central square perform the ”PIN ” that is, a mechanical and very scenographic transformation of the architecture of the float.
It is a unique and very complicated thing and, this transformation, reveals the sense of allegory that had hitherto remained hidden.

Our "Carnevalai" are fantastic with paper mache and our children can learn this art early.
During the second Sunday of carnival, the floats are awarded by a jury which awards the winners (a mandatory plural as there are different categories) the cloth depicting Bertoldo and his son Bertoldino.
The Persicetano carnival is one of a kind: WE ARE WAITING FOR YOU.