40 Fun Facts About Bocce

Excavators found a set of bocce balls in a room, later nicknamed the bocciodromo, of which ancient town?

Pompeii preserved the set under volcanic ash, a sign that the Romans had already turned stone-throwing from a test of strength into a game of aim at a fixed target.

Which Roman emperor is said to have owned a prized set of bocce balls made of olive root?

Augustus kept his fine olive-root set in the years when Romans were first swapping stone balls for wooden ones.

Bocce's accessibility to all ages and abilities has made it a popular official sport of which organisation?

Special Olympics programmes took to bocce because people of every age and ability can play, and many set up inflatable PVC courts that pack away after a session.

Bocce balls are true spheres, unlike the lopsided balls that curve as they roll in which related sport?

Lawn bowls uses balls shaped with a bias so that they swing in an arc, while a bocce ball has no built-in bias and runs straight.

Boccia, a relative of bocce played with soft leather balls, has been part of which multi-sport event since 1984?

The Paralympic Games added boccia in New York and Stoke Mandeville, and it remains one of only two sports there with no Olympic counterpart, alongside goalball.

Medieval kings banned bowling games like bocce because they wanted their men to practise which skill instead?

Archery won battles, so an English king barred his bowmen from the game, and two French kings later forbade it to commoners until the 1600s.

In pétanque, bocce's French cousin, the target ball is called the cochonnet, a word meaning which animal?

Piglet is the literal meaning of cochonnet, one of several French nicknames for the little ball, alongside others that mean the goal and the little one.

In bocce, what Italian name, sometimes translated as 'bullet', is given to the small target ball?

Pallino is the usual name, though some regions prefer boccino, and the first throw of every frame sends it down the court for both sides to chase.

Bolas criollas, a bocce-like sport played with red and green balls, is a tradition of which country?

Venezuela treats bolas criollas as an icon of its cattle-plains culture, and the Venezuelan style has spread to Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire.

Which ancient Greek thinker recommended a stone-throwing ancestor of bocce as a way to stay healthy?

Hippocrates advised the game in his medical treatises, and centuries later the physician Galen was prescribing it to the young and the old alike.

In traditional bocce, a ball lofted through the air must be thrown with which kind of arm action?

Underarm throws are the only kind allowed, and players use them mostly to knock the target ball or a rival ball into a more favourable spot.

Once both sides have rolled a ball in a bocce frame, which side must throw the next one?

Whichever is farther away keeps throwing until it gets a ball inside the rival's best or runs out, which is why one side can roll several balls in a row.

A standard bocce set holds how many large balls, split evenly between the colours of two sides?

A full set has 8 balls, so in singles one player rolls a whole colour alone, while in doubles each partner rolls half of the team's share.

Which bocce shot is lofted to hit its target on the full or after a short hop?

Volo comes from volare, and the shot is spectacular enough to give its name to a whole variant of the game played with a run-up.

In US open bocce, a player's foot may touch but not fully cross which court marking before release?

Foul line rulings are forgiving in the open game: as long as part of the foot, even the heel, remains on the line, the throw counts.

In strict international bocce, what must a player declare before trying to knock a ball away with a throw?

The intended target has to be named in advance, and a breach lets the other side keep the result or have everything put back where it was.

In international bocce, officials mark where each ball lies with what, so play can be reset after a breach?

Chalk marks on the court record the position of every ball, large and small, so a throw that breaks the rules can be undone exactly.

One bocce variant, thrown after a run-up to the line, swaps the traditional ball for one of which material?

Metal balls, usually bronze, set the variant apart, and its throwers are known for a run-up that is athletic, even theatrical.

In traditional bocce, what happens if the starting side twice fails to land the target ball in the zone?

Opponents place it wherever they like inside the zone, but the side that first tried keeps the right to roll the opening ball.

In US open bocce, a rolled ball is dead if it reaches which part of the court without touching another ball?

The backboard kills any ball that reaches it without first touching another ball or the target, although the side boards may be used at any time.

Gioco delle bocchie, the 1753 manual that first set out bocce rules in Italian, was published in which city?

Bologna printed Raffaele Bisteghi's handbook at a time when bocce matches in Piedmont were so noisy that players were often moved on from church squares.

Which Italian city saw the country's first bocce club form in 1873 and its first national championship in 1919?

Turin led the way for organised bocce, and 137 players entered that first championship, which was for singles only.

Which pope is named alongside President Sandro Pertini among the famous figures who helped bocce grow in Italy?

John Paul II and Pertini lent their fame in the years when club competitions took off, shortly before the world's bocce federations united in 1985.

The world confederation uniting the bocce and pétanque federations was founded in 1985 in which tiny state?

Monaco hosted the founding on 21 December 1985, when three international federations joined forces to lobby for a place at the Summer Games.

Bocce reached a North Carolina town in 1893 with Italian immigrants belonging to which religious group?

Waldensians made bocce a cornerstone of Valdese life, and their mutual aid society runs covered, lighted clay courts that host a state tournament each September.

Which Brazilian city, where Italian families founded a bocce club in 1952, marks its own bocce day each 25 May?

Curitiba's Italian families called their club Sociedade 25 de Maio, and the city developed a classic style of its own in which the ball is rolled, never thrown.

Known there as bochas, bocce has its main South American home in which country with a large Italian community?

Argentina took up bochas with its Italian immigrants, who at first were the only players before later generations and outsiders joined in.

In which former Yugoslav republic is bocce known as balinanje rather than by the Serbo-Croatian name boćanje?

Slovenia also knows the game colloquially as bale, from the Venetian word for balls, a trace of how it spread along the eastern Adriatic.

Stone balls from about 7000 BC, possibly an early form of bocce, were unearthed at Çatalhöyük in which country?

Turkey's Neolithic town yielded spheres worn as if rolled over rough ground, though the archaeologist James Mellaart suspected they had a religious use.

Which famous square in Rome once held a vast bocce ground that hundreds of players crowded into every day?

Piazza Navona was the city's great bowling ground in the centuries when the game was booming across Italy in spite of local bans.

The first women's world championship in raffa bocce was played in 1993 in which Canadian city?

Montreal crowned Daniela Roda as the first women's world champion, ten years after the very first raffa world championship.

The athletic run-up variant of bocce also goes by a French name taken from which city?

Lyon gives its name to la lyonnaise, the French twin of the variant, and the international federation that governs it was founded in 1946.

Bocce and its French cousin pétanque both belong to which family of ball games?

Boules games all share one aim: landing heavy balls as near as possible to a small target ball.

Under US open bocce rules, what decides which side gets to throw the target ball first and choose an end?

A coin flip between the captains settles it, and whichever side throws the target ball also rolls the first ball of the frame.

The name of pétanque, bocce's French cousin, comes from a Provençal phrase describing the thrower in which way?

Feet planted was the whole point: pétanque was devised in La Ciotat for a player whose rheumatism stopped him from making the usual run-up.

American bocce courts have been surfaced with clay, crushed stone, carpet and the shells of which sea creature?

Oyster shells sit beside dirt and clay in the US federation's list of surfaces, and the newest courts use a poured liquid that sets into a very fast floor.

In US open bocce, what gives a side three choices after a ball strikes one of its opponents on court?

Rule of Advantage lets the side leave everything where it stopped, take the ball that hit the player off the court, or place that ball anywhere it likes.

In US open bocce, what happens if the closest balls are still tied after every ball is thrown?

No points are awarded and the side that scored last restarts play from the other end, though a tie found in mid-frame makes the last thrower roll again.

Which country dominated the early bocce world championships until Italy took its first title in 1957?

France ruled the sport until an Italian four won on French soil at Béziers, and Italy then topped the podium repeatedly through the 1960s.

In boccia, the indoor relative of bocce, athletes who cannot throw may use which device to deliver the ball?

A ramp is allowed for competitors with the most severe disabilities, while others may propel the ball with a hand or a foot.