The Quintana of Ascoli lives with different moments and tempos, that retrace the ritual path of the antique city celebrations, carefully described in the Statutes and in the Medieval documents of the elders: the solemn oath, the reading of the announcement, the "show" of the new Banner and the procession on the feast of Sant'Anna, in conjunction with the inauguration of the patron saint feast day; the competitions of the flag wavers and of the archers, the festivals in the taverns of the sestiere; the ceremony of the offering of the great candle of the City and of the candles of the corporations to the bishop; the blessing of the cavaliers by the bishop and the drawing of lots for the order of assault against the Saracen, the evening of the eve of the joust; and lastly, the historical procession in its entirety in the splendid and accurate costumes of the era (some of them inspired by the clothing in the paintings of the Maestro di Offida or of Carlo Crivelli) and the joust in the Field of the Games, the first Sunday of August.
Today as yesterday, the city lives within and outside of its manifestations: from the bishop and the Council in the cathedral to the mayor and the maximum local authorities, up until the youngest of the sestieranti who already as a child begins to grow with the Quintana in his blood.
To participate in the Quintana, in its complex ceremonies, is to immerse oneself in an act of making public life a ritual in which the feast represents a central symbolical element, a sort of immediate tool to understanding.
The same urban typology, in its major spaces (the "public" piazza dell'Arengo; the incomparable beauty of piazza del Popolo, for centuries a harmonious "living room" of the city's life; the "piazza de socto", entitled to Ventidio Basso, from which every year the historical procession departs) and in its minor spaces (the small neighborhood piazzas and the web of the streets and rue alleyways, of churches, houses and towers), closed in by the circle of the town walls, but through the gates, open and attentive to the lands and castles of the territorial committee, it lends itself to the organization of the scenic apparatus that becomes a reference point to the feast and to the relative ceremonies: decorations, luminaries, music and, as a sign of immediate impact, the colors: those of the drapes, of the banners, standards and the costumes of the sestiere, those of the Palio (Banner).
