The ice palace
Once, in Bologna, they made a palace of ice cream right on the Piazza Maggiore, and the children came from far away to give him a lick.
The roof was of whipped cream, the smoke from the chimneys of cotton candy, the chimneys of candied fruit. Everything else was ice: the ice cream doors, ice walls, the furniture of ice cream.
A small child attacked a table and licked its legs one by one, until the table with all the dishes collapsed on top of him, and the dishes were of chocolate ice cream, the best.
At some point, a city realized that a window was melting. The glasses were of strawberry ice cream, and melted in pink rivulets.
“Quick,” the guard shouted, “quicker yet!”
And all began to lick faster, so not to lose a single drop of that masterpiece.
“An armchair!” pleaded a little old lady, who could not make her way through the crowd, “a chair for a poor old woman. Who will bring it to me? With armrests, if you can.”
A generous fireman ran to take an armchair of ice cream and pistachios, and the poor old lady, all blessed, actually began to lick it by the armrests.
That was a great day, and by the doctors order no one had the stomach ache.
Even now, when the children ask another ice cream, the parents sigh: “Yeah, for you that would take a whole building, like that of Bologna.”
By Gianni Rodari "Fairy Tales by Telephone", translated from the Italian "Favole al telefono." (1961)