“Civitas Alidosiana” is a non-profit cultural association which was founded in Imola with the purpose of studying and spreading the local history, with particular reference to the period of the domination of the Alidosi family over Imola (1341-1424). This was in fact a period of great changes which affected politics, society and the structure of the town, leaving a strong mark on our city’s history. The great part of the beautiful artistic and architectonic elements that we inherited from that era are still visible in our territory, but mostly unknown or forgotten by local people. Our aim is therefore to give new importance and visibility to the political and cultural dynamics that involved our town in the years of the Alidosiani dominium.
Historical re-enactment is the main activity of our association and it is focused on the years of Beltrando Alidosi’s rule over the town as vicario pontificio (1361-1391 AD). Under his administration, the town of Imola had the opportunity to build ties with the cities of Bologna, Florence and other important centres of Northern Italy. Our historical research is based mainly on local documents and includes various areas of interest, ranging from documented events to everyday life situations. The analysis of XIV century hand-crafted items is indeed fundamental to recreate dresses, furniture, accessories as well as military equipment while trying to be as accurate as possible towards the manufacturing techniques of the period.
Another important part of our activity concerns cooperating with other societies and re-enactment groups who share with us the same passion towards accuracy in living history activities.
The main purpose of the hystorical society Civitas Alidosiana is to accurately recreate the daily life of the town of Imola during the years between 1362 and 1391. In order to do so, Civitas Alidosiana intends to focus on every kind of inhabitant of the old civitas: from artisans to shop keepers, from merchants – and the related activities ranging from everyday work to housekeeping – to members of local noble families. To face menaces or danger citizens could be called to fight for the city, and in these occasions they dressed as soldiers and knights, helped sometimes by professional fighters, mercenaries paid by the city lords.
Civitas Alidosiana‘s fundamentals are the involvement and the efforts of every single member in historical research and recreation of hand-crafted equipment. As a matter of fact, every detail of our clothes, military and camp equipment is based and studied on the period’s findings and on iconographic and documentary fonts. Moreover, we use material and techniques which are as similar as possible to the original ones. Artisan activities such as needlecraft, weaving, wood carving and metal working are encouraged within the Civitas and promoted during historical events with educational purposes. Some results of our research and studies can be found on the blog Tacuinum Medievale.
During the events our group members live in the historical camp, where they can sleep in historical tents, eat medieval recipes while resting under a shed, carry out different artisan activities and have a chat and a laugh together in the evenings.