Calcio Fiorentino Calcio Fiorentino Calcio fiorentino (also known as calcio storico "historic football") is an early form of football and rugby that originated in 16th-century Italy. Once widely played, the sport is thought to have started in the "Piazza Santa Croce" in Florence. There it became known as the "giuoco del calcio fiorentino" ("Florentine kick game") or simply "calcio"; which is now also the name for association football in the Italian language. The game may have started as a revival of the Roman sport of harpastum. Calcio was reserved for rich aristocrats who played every night between Epiphany and Lent. Even popes,
Rugby union in Italy first official rules of "calcio fiorentino" were recorded in 1580, although the game had been developing around Florence for some time before that date. The game involved teams of 27 kicking and carrying a ball in a giant sandpit set up in the Piazza Santa Croce in the centre of Florence, both teams aiming for their designated point on the perimeter of the sandpit. British communities brought rugby to Genoa between 1890 and 1895, with other games in Italy around 1909. The society that organised the first games dissolved soon after them. Italian rugby's traditional heartland consists of the small