Adunata Genoa 2026 · Day 4: The Parade

Diary of the National Alpini Rally (Adunata) · Part 4 of 5

Sunday’s parade

Nobody sleeps much on the eve of the parade. Even after a night of celebration like Saturday’s, even with the camp beds at the bowls club that by now know the sound of our breathing, there is something that keeps you awake. It is the anticipation. It is knowing that in a few hours you will put on your hat for the very reason it exists: to march in line, among hundreds of thousands of other hats identical to yours, before an Italy that — for one day at least — chooses to love you.

That is why we all get ready with care: freshly washed and smelling sweet, with special attention to the Group’s uniform and particular care to be properly turned out — just like the great Padoin, who appeared with a magnificent double Windsor knot in his Section tie. Are we marching or not? Well, exactly.

By train, bright and early, to Carignano

We set off early in the morning, once again by train from Chiavari station. The fourth time in five days that we have made this journey — by now the railwaymen greet us by name. The train is packed with Alpini hats, as much as on Saturday and more. We climb aboard, squeeze in between the carriages, swap the last forecasts about the weather: “will it hold?”, “I don’t think so”, “as long as we don’t get the great flood like in Pordenone”.

In Genoa we get off and head straight for Carignano, the assembly area — the very district where our Carlotta Sacchet lives, who yesterday had been our guide through the alleys of the old town. It is almost fate: it all began at her home, it will all end at her home.

Gianni from Turin, and the honour of the banner

Waiting for us outside Carlotta’s building we find a dear face: our member Gianni Casula, who came down from Turin especially to march with us. He travelled alone just to be there — because some things cannot be delegated, and you never miss a parade with your own Group, whatever it takes.

And here I have to say it, because it filled us with pride: this year the Salce Alpini Group had the honour of carrying one of the three banners of the Belluno ANA Section. The banner that fell to us was the one bearing the words:

Seven words. Seven words that say it all. A beacon of hope for Italy — not a claim, not a boast, but a promise that for a hundred and fifty years the Alpini have tried to keep, in floods, in earthquakes, on peace missions, in abandoned valleys, wherever there is need of hands that work without asking anything in return.

Carrying it through the streets of Genoa, in the parade that closes the 2026 Adunata, was a privilege we will remember for as long as we have memory.

Coffee and biscuits at Carlotta’s

Carlotta, still a little sleepy — Sunday is Sunday, even for the daughters of Alpini councillors — welcomed us at the door with a tray of hot coffee and biscuits. A breakfast of a few minutes, in the street and on our feet, but made with the heart of someone who knows that before a parade an Alpino needs only a few things: his hat on his head, a hand on his shoulder and a strong coffee in his stomach.

She arranged to meet us later, along the parade route. She wanted to see us march together with our “edelweiss”, the inseparable Mara, Domenica, Marilisa and Lorenza, who in the meantime were already getting ready. One of them, however, had a very specific task that day, an institutional one: Lorenza De Kunovich would represent the Municipality of Belluno in the parade, with the tricolour sash across her chest. And so it was. A woman from Belluno representing Belluno in Genoa at the biggest Adunata of the year: there is something deeply right about that, something that rhymes with everything we believe in.

At the assembly area, among hats and drums

A few metres further on, we reported to the assembly point. That is where we found the lads of the Fanfara della Cadore, who were to march ahead of us in the parade — from Belluno too, our own people, with their instruments already polished and their uniforms spotless. Greetings, handshakes, a few jokes exchanged. They are already focused, if a little worried about the weather; you can tell from their faces.

The atmosphere at the assembly area, every year, is something special — hard to explain to anyone who has not experienced it. It is like meeting up again with an old friend you have not seen since exactly a year ago. Only here the friends come by the dozen, dozens upon dozens. Men from Friuli, Trentino, the Aosta Valley, Piedmont, Lombardy, scattered through all the streets of Carignano, waiting to set off with their Section blocks.

But here, in Via Nino Bixio, are the people from Belluno. All of them! Faces you recognise from past Adunate — Trento 2018, Milan 2019, Rimini 2022, Udine 2023, Vicenza 2024, Biella 2025 — that come back before you like the pages of a family album. The Castion Group, the Mel Group, the ever-present “oranges” of the Tambre Group, the people from Zoldo, from Sois, from the Agordino. And seeing them again is, all the same, a hymn to life. If we are here, it means we are all well. And we will march in memory of those friends who have laid down their packs.

And with everyone it is the same scene: a hug, a photo, a “how are you?”. People ask after children, grandchildren, wives. We remember those who are no longer with us — those who “have gone ahead”, as we say. We talk about next year, about Brescia 2027. There are men you had not seen for twelve months (or even longer) whom you recognise immediately, as if they were close relatives. And in a way, they are.

The parade, in the driving rain

And then, at last, the moment. What can one say about the parade?

It began with a most annoying, driving rain, the kind that gets into your collar and trickles down your back, that soaks your trousers at the knees and would make anyone turn back who did not have the right hat on his head. But we do have that hat. And under that hat, for a hundred and fifty years, the Alpini have not turned back.

The only thing that muffled the noise of the rain was the steady beat of the drums and the music of the Fanfara della Cadore marching ahead of us. That rhythm that gets into your bones, that makes you march without even noticing, that wipes away fatigue and wets your eyes more than the rain. Tum-pa-pa. Tum-pa-pa. It is the beat of an ancient heart, the step of father and grandfather, the muffled voice of the mountain coming down to the valley.

That is how we marched, with the banner “Alpini, a beacon of hope for Italy” held by Ivano, Luciano, Loris, Gianni, by Mauro, Alfredo, Cesare, Fulvio and Fabio, while the rain beat on their hats and ran down their faces. Ahead of us the drums of the Cadore. Ahead of and behind us the other Alpini of the Groups of the Belluno Section. On the pavements, despite the deluge, a crowd that clapped, cheered and waved tricolour flags soaked through.

Genoa in the rain, and on its feet

It was a parade we will remember for a long time not in spite of the rain, but because of the rain. Because seeing thousands of Genoese standing in the wet for hours, applauding every Group that passed, was a display of civic dignity worth more than a thousand speeches about national unity. Genoa lived up to its name — that of a city that has always known how to recognise those who deserve respect, even when the sky does not help.

Carlotta, true to her word, saw us set off. Our edelweiss went to town with souvenir photos at the assembly area. Lorenza, with the tricolour sash, marched as one should, steady and composed (and drenched!), beside Roberto Padrin and among the other mayors, representing one city to another. The other edelweiss, patriotically themed again today, drew applause and photographs as much as on Saturday and more.

The journey home, to Salce

When it was all over, we met up again in Chiavari to take down the marquee, fold up the camp beds, and say goodbye to Antonello, Patrizia and our friends at the bowls club who had welcomed us so generously during these days. Long hugs, a few tears barely held back, the promise to come back — perhaps as tourists, some summer, when the Tigullio is calm and the alleys empty.

Then into the minibus again. No Val Trebbia in reverse this time, but the Apennines and the motorway, with a thought for Agazzano and for everything that came after, during the Genoa weekend. Inside the vehicles, tiredness and silences, and that sweet silence you know so well: the silence of those who have been happy and now need to take it all in. Someone snores, someone looks out of the window, someone scrolls through the photos on their phone.

In Salce, the square in front of the Group’s headquarters welcomes us just as it had seen us off five days earlier — only now we have changed, if only very slightly, even if we could not quite say in what way. The luggage is unloaded, the provisions and the banner are unloaded with care, and the memories are unloaded too, to be kept aside for the Col Maòr and for evenings at the headquarters.

Adunata Genoa 2026, filed away

Adunata Genoa 2026, then, is filed away. It was splendid as always — as we had wished everyone on the first day, writing from the bowls club in Chiavari. We say it again now, as we close our diary: it will always be splendid as long as there is one Alpino on his feet wearing the hat.

But there is still one page to write. An important page, which was not in the plans when we left Salce, and which was born of a gesture that the writer was determined to make in the midst of the celebrations: the pilgrimage to the monument to Guido Rossa, the Alpino paratrooper from Belluno killed by the Red Brigades on 24 January 1979. A page that does not speak of our journey, but of why we make it. A page lest we forget.

You will find it in the fifth and final part of this diary.

— from the travel notebook of the Salce Alpini Group