Two Italian cities fought a deadly medieval war — and the winners carried off a wooden bucket they still display

The so-called War of the Bucket is medieval Italy at its most absurd and its most lethal. In 1325, amid the long feud between Guelphs and Ghibellines, Bologna mustered an army said to number some 32,000 men and marched on its smaller rival, Modena. At Zappolino, a heavily outnumbered Modenese force — stiffened by professional German soldiers — routed them. About 2,000 men died across both sides.

Here’s where the legend gets tangled. The famous story says the war was sparked when Modenese soldiers stole a bucket from a Bolognese well. The truth runs the other way: the real trigger was Modena’s capture of the Bolognese fortress of Monteveglio, and the bucket was a trophy, snatched from a well in Bologna after the victory, not the cause of it.

Modena hauled the pail home, and its citizens have treated it as a war trophy ever since.

The original wooden bucket still survives in Modena’s town hall, with a replica displayed in the Ghirlandina tower. Its fame was cemented in 1622, when the poet Alessandro Tassoni turned the episode into a mock-heroic epic, La Secchia Rapita — “The Stolen Bucket” — and a minor border skirmish became one of history’s most quotably ridiculous wars.