Passengers rush to board train cars for the Ferragosto vacation departure

Hardly two years had passed since the end of the war, and Italy was a country in shambles, still to be reconstructed. Nonetheless, people wanted to leave the past behind and to look hopefully to the future, also indulging in the pleasure of a mid-August vacation. Even so, the numbers were impressive. A semantic study of the articles published by Corriere della Sera on the day of August 15, or “Ferragosto”, reveals that the word “esodo” (“departure en masse”) was already being used at the end of the 1800s, with high points in 1967, 1968 and 1973.