In 1325, two Italian cities went to war. Thousands of soldiers clashed in one of medieval Italy's bloodiest battles. The cause of this war? A wooden bucket. And yes, that bucket still exists today, locked away in a tower where it's been for nearly 700 years.
The cities were Modena and Bologna, neighbors in northern Italy who already hated each other for complicated political reasons involving the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. But the specific incident that triggered actual warfare was when soldiers from Modena raided Bologna and stole a wooden bucket from a well.
This wasn't even a special bucket. It was literally just a normal oak bucket used to draw water from a public well. But Bologna demanded it back, and Modena refused. The insult of the theft—and Modena's refusal to return it—escalated into full-scale war.
On November 15, 1325, the two cities met at the Battle of Zappolino. Bologna brought 32,000 infantry soldiers and 2,000 cavalry. Modena showed up with just 7,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry. By all logic, Bologna should have crushed them.
Instead, Modena won decisively. Over 2,000 Bologna soldiers died that day, and Bologna lost the battle so badly they never got their bucket back. Modena celebrated by parading the stolen bucket through their streets as a war trophy.
Here's where it gets even more ridiculous: the war didn't actually start because of the bucket. The two cities had been on the brink of conflict for years over political alliances. The bucket theft just happened to be the final straw—historians believe Modena's soldiers probably stole it specifically to provoke Bologna into battle.
Bologna was so humiliated by losing the war that they tried multiple times over the centuries to get the bucket back. They sent diplomatic envoys, offered money, even threatened more military action. Modena refused every single time. The bucket became a symbol of Modena's victory and Bologna's shame.
In 1325, immediately after the battle, Modena locked the bucket in the bell tower of the Ghirlandina cathedral, where it remains to this very day. You can't touch it or get close to it—it sits behind protective barriers, still mocking Bologna nearly 700 years later.
The story became so famous that in 1622, an Italian poet wrote an epic mock-heroic poem called "La secchia rapita" (The Stolen Bucket), treating the whole absurd conflict like it was the Trojan War. The poem is still taught in Italian schools as a satire of how stupid political conflicts can get.
The truly wild part? The bucket displayed in the tower might not even be the original. Some historians believe the real bucket rotted away centuries ago and was replaced with a replica, but nobody knows for sure. Modena refuses to let anyone test it because the legend is more valuable than the truth. They fought a war over a bucket, and they're still bragging about it 700 years later.