Ferragosto: From the Feriae Augusti to the 1931 Popular Trains

Today, August 15, Italy comes to a stop for Ferragosto. The name comes from the Latin feriae Augusti, “the holidays of Augustus”: a period of rest instituted in the age of Augustus at Rome, which originally fell on August 1. It was the Church, centuries later, that moved it to the 15th, making it coincide with the feast of the Assumption of Mary — so the two holidays, the pagan and the Christian, overlapped until they became a single date on the calendar.

The exact year of its institution, and its motive, are not settled in the sources. A widespread tradition places it in 18 BC and links it to the commemoration of the fall of Alexandria, but Augustus himself never mentions it in the Res Gestae, the official autobiography inscribed on his monuments: the attribution should be treated with caution. What is better supported is that the feriae fell in a lull of the agricultural year, between the wheat harvest and the grape harvest, alongside other Roman festivals of the same month such as the Vinalia Rustica and the Consualia.

The Ferragosto Getaway Is 95 Years Old

The modern custom — leaving on August 15 for the sea or the mountains — isn’t two thousand years old: it’s ninety-five. It began in August 1931, when the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro, together with the Ministry of Communications and the State Railways, put into service the first treni popolari (“popular trains”): special reduced-fare services — sources cite discounts that, depending on the period and the route, ranged from 40 up to 80% off the ticket price — meant to let workers take a day trip out of town.

It was the first public initiative of mass tourism in Italy, and the phenomenon quickly entered the popular imagination: as early as 1933, Raffaello Matarazzo made a film about it, Treno popolare, the source of the still above — families loaded with luggage, able for the first time to reach in a single day a sea or a mountain once reserved for those who could afford a real holiday.

The Istituto Luce Film

The original 1931 newsreel, documenting one of the first popular-train excursions, to Venice.

Sources

• Treccani, entry «Ferragosto» — Vocabolario and Enciclopedia Italiana
• Istituto Luce Historical Archive, «I treni popolari» (1931)
• GIANO Public History APS, «Binari di propaganda e svago: i Treni Popolari del Dopolavoro fascista» — bibliography: Victoria De Grazia, Consenso e cultura di massa nell’Italia fascista, Laterza 1981
• Wikipedia, entry «Treni popolari» — bibliography: Andrea Giuntini, transport historian