Record-breaking Alpine gathering, three days of celebration in Vicenza

VICENZA – A huge party that will bring half a million people to Vicenza, but there are those who dare that it could even go further. Three hundred thousand will come from outside, which will be added to the Ana members and the numerous local supporters. Today is a date that will remain historic for the capital Berico, as 33 years after the previous and first edition, the 95th National Alpine Gathering begins. The highly anticipated 2024 event was titled by the organizers “The Alpini’s dream of peace”, a concept underlined in recent days during the presentation at Palazzo Franceschini Folco by the national president of the ANA Sebastiano Favero; that of the local section Lino Marchiori, and the commander of the Alpine Troops, Army Corps general Ignazio Gamba, during a meeting which was also attended by the mayor Giacomo Possamai and the president of the Province Andrea Nardin.
Annually, always in mid-May, the National Gathering is the most important event of all for the Alpini: an opportunity to meet, remember the Fallen, reiterate the values ​​of solidarity and renew “the pride of belonging” . The first in history, on Mount Ortigara in 1920, was born precisely from the need for reflection, sharing and memory of those who had escaped the War and in the name of those who had never returned. Since then (with suspension only during the Second World War, in 1950 on the occasion of the Jubilee in Rome, and then in 2020 and 2021 due to Covid) the Gathering has been held every year in a different Italian location, chosen by the Board of Directors National of the ANA among the candidate cities two years early. The next one will be in Biella and in the autumn we will know who will win the 2026 edition between Genoa, Brescia and Matera.
«A celebration, but also a unique occasion of memory, of transmission of values, of reflection and culture in a beautiful and cheerful city thanks to the 30 thousand flags that dress it», Mayor Possamai defined it. Both he and Pinamonti, president of Adunata Alpini 2024, reiterated that an event of this magnitude, which involves hundreds of thousands of people in three days, will inevitably lead to some inconvenience for the residents, to whom they appeal to show patience and «live the overwhelming atmosphere”.