In 1976, a landslide wiped out most of the village of Consonno in the Lake Como region of Italy. Although it was essentially a ghost town, every year in August, the tiny town would pulse with activity during the annual International Hide-and-Seek Championship. Beginning in 1978, as many as 80 teams representing a dozen countries from around the would would descend on Consonno to play the childhood game, in hopes of winning a golden fig leaf, the symbol of hide-and-seek. Players are given 60 seconds to find a hiding place and then must reach home base — a large, specially designed air mattress — before being caught by the seeker or before time runs out. Thanks to the valley’s vastness, which stretches across the foothills of the Alps, the competition is a far cry from the hide-and-seek games you might remember from your youth. “The beauty of the event is that adults get to become children again for the weekend,” said event organizer Giorgio Moratti. On Friday and Saturday night, there are concerts and DJ shows to entertain the exhausted players. Participants of the hide-and-seek game, who are between 18 and 60 years old, pay an entry fee of €125 ($142) per team. The competition continues for two full days, until a winner is declared.
