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Palla (Italian for
ball) is a traditional
TuscanTuscany is a region in North-Central Italy. It has an area of and a population of about 3.6 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence.Tuscany is known for its landscapes and its artistic legacy...
ball game played in towns between
SienaSiena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena.The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site.- History :...
and
GrossetoGrosseto is a town and comune in the central Italian region of Tuscany, the capital of the Province of Grosseto. The city lies 14 km from the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the Maremma, at the centre of an alluvial plain, on the Ombrone river....
. It is also called
palla EH! (or
pallaeh!) because players call out
eh! before serving.
Small hand-made balls contain a lead pellet wrapped in rubber and wool with a leather cover. The game is played by facing teams who strike (not catch) the ball with either a bare or gloved hand. Courts are marked out with painted lines on town streets, but there is no net, and players can move between sides. Adjacent buildings, objects, and sometimes spectators, are considered "in play." Play does stop for oncoming automobiles. Similar to
real tennisReal tennis, often called "Royal Tennis" – one of the several sports sometimes called the sport of Kings – is the original indoor racquet sport from which the modern game of lawn tennis, or tennis, is descended...
, a second bounce can result in a "chase" rather than an outright point, marked in chalk where the ball stops rolling.
In one version of palla, scoring is identical to that of tennis (15-30-40-game). In a variant sometimes called
pallaventuno (or
palla 21) scoring is 7-14-21.
Pallacorda (or
palla della corda) is an extinct form of the game where a cord was strung across the street.
PisaPisa is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the Arno River on the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa...
,
PratoPrato is a city in Tuscany, Italy, the capital of the Province of Prato.Historically, Prato's economy has been based on the textile industry. The renowned are a significant collection of late medieval documents produced between 1363 and 1410...
,
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
, Siena, and various Tuscan towns still have streets named
via Pallacorda or
via Della Corda.
Historical significance
Palla is of interest to those who study the history of tennis, as it provides some insight into the development of the more contemporarily popular sport. Given the similarities of scoring and the use of chases, it is highly likely palla and tennis share a common sporting ancestor, the various games of palla being more primal in form.
The fact that real tennis was originally played without
racquetA racquet is a sports implement consisting of a handled frame with an open hoop across which a network of cord is stretched tightly. It is used for striking a ball in such games as squash, tennis, racquetball, and badminton...
s is
well documented. The name of the sport in French is
jeu de paumeJeu de paume was originally a French precursor of lawn tennis played without racquets. The players hit the ball with their hands, as in palla, volleyball, or certain varieties of pelota. Jeu de paume literally means: game of palm . In time gloves replaced bare hands. Even when bats, and finally...
, or
game of the palm (of the hand). However, the development of the net is documented less well. In real tennis the net is also referred to sometimes as "the line." Palla eh! uses only a line painted on the ground to mark territory, and this is probably all it was originally. The cord was added for pallacorda probably just to keep the players on their respective sides of the court, and a ball that went under the cord, yet across the line, was probably still a fair shot. Later illustrations of pallacorda and tennis show tassels hung from the cord to indicate if a ball went below the cord. The net was merely an enhancement on the tassels, and it now serves three functions: marking territory, controlling player movement, and restricting the flight of the ball. When modern
lawn tennisTennis is a sport played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a strung racquet to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court....
adopted real tennis' net, it also brought with it these three functions.
The fact that variants of palla are all street games, and that they are clearly related to real tennis suggests something of the development of the latter sport's court. It had been assumed that a real tennis court developed from the layout of monastery
cloisterthumb|250px|right|Cloister of Saint Trophimus, in [[Arles]], [[France]]thumb|250px|right|Cloister of [[Abbaye de Fontenay]], in [[Marmagne]], [[France]]...
s. This is mainly due to the early popularity of the game among clerics, and similarities of some court features to a cloister. However, this theory has two problems. Cloisters are usually square, while a tennis court is much longer than it is wide. Secondly, some of the similar features of tennis courts were actually introduced in the 16th century, and earlier layouts were less similar to cloisters. The study of palla has led many to suggest that the first tennis courts were made by those who wanted to play the street game, but could afford a more private and much cleaner setting. Similarities to cloisters in later court designs could either be coincidence, or intentional innovations, rather than a more organic evolution of forms. The proportions of the court and features such as penthouses and windows could easily relate to medieval streets.