The research of enjoyment, of pleasure expressed in different kinds of shows (natural, sport, artistic) is a need probably born with the man, because it introduces the extraordinary into the everyday life, the exception in the banality of the rule. The Fairground, born in the Middle Age around 1000 with commercial function, offered since the beginning a joyful image of big market for merchandise, a show made of colours, sounds, calls, shouting and noisy crowd..

The Fairground represented also the didfferent human aspects: umbrella makers, tin men, knife sharpeners, charlatans, scribes, brokers, impostors, young thieves, mendicants, naive visitors. Above all of them barkers excelled, that is sellers having magnetic fascination: fantasy, mimic, fluency that bewitched a curious and naive audience. The fairgrounds represented also an extraordinary natural stage, where strolling players companies, strolling artists and itinerants, story-tellers, lantern sellers, tumblers, acrobats and comedians: everyone equally forced because of the need and never owed to free choice. They were poor disinherited, jobless, forced to a painful whirl of invention, in order to surprise the audience and to survive..

Inside the merchant fairground, in this place opened to the show and to enjoyment, at the same time as a type of popular theatre, in 1700s introduced also shows of freaks, menageries and rudimentary games, such as swingers and simple rides moved manually by men.

The fairground at the time had a triple function: it represented a commercial place, an exhibition place of barkers-sellers and itinerant actors, and finally a place of information exchanging for people thirsty of news in a historical period during which there were no stable medias: in a world without schools, books, newspapers, television, telephone and internet, the square was the only opportunity for meeting people coming from different and far places, a centre of social aggregation with an important cultural value, as a place of show production and consumption.

The story-tellers, the puppet shows, the art comedy, the magic lanterns, the exotic menageries, science's stands and itinerant anatomic museums made visible the history, the science, the news to illiterate people, that had no other way of learning. The discoveries and the inventions of the XIX century, the steam engine, the electricity, the photography, the cinema had a large diffusion and they were known by the population quite at the fairgrounds and in the amusement parks.

The Fairground has been for centuries -and since few decades ago- an authentic school of learning by means of the varied type of popular show, so that the population's cultural level was defined by the frequency to the fairground.

This thing happened in the pre-industrial period. Around 1750 the process of transformation of the Fairground marked a decisive stage. With the industrialization and the start of the capitalistic process, the goods went out from the Fairground and found new markets and more rapid channels of exchange (trains, shops, general stores, showrooms and so on). The medieval fair of goods had difficulties and becomes principally opportunity of enjoyment with the first mechanical games and the first swinger rides.

In the beginning of 1900 in Italy with the Universal Exposition was completed the Fairground transformation that became Amusement Park with the ride's claim. Since then the Fairground had offered enjoyment only by human resources, without mechanical means; with the industrial development the shows to attract audience altered and acquired new technologies, that forced artists to a progressive leaving of the squares, because they weren't remunerative enough.

And now we talk about the beginning of recent history: since the '50s in Italy (the beginning of 1900 in Europe) the use of electricity, the large technological development and the availability of lighter and more resistant materials, have allowed the born of dizzy and thrilling rides and so the Funfair has become Luna Park, a structure answering to the new users' needs, attracted by violent movements and strong emotions. Moreover, now it is going to become a permanent structure, giving troubles to what for centuries had represented the travelling show.

Even if deeply changed in respect of the originary functions, the Luna Park represents the new city square and the Ride, together with the Circus, is the remianing part of the travelling popular show. Dazzling lights, sparkling decorations and absorbing musics replace in a more impersonal way, but more effective for our periods, the role covered by barkers in ancient times.

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