The ballata (plural: ballate) is an Italian poetic and musical form in use from the late 13th to the 15th century.
Unlike the virelai, the two "b" lines usually have exactly the same music and only in later ballate pick up the (formerly distinctly French) first and second (open and close) endings.
The ballata was one of the most prominent secular musical forms during the trecento, the period often known as the Italian ars nova.
Ballate are sung at the end of each day of Boccaccio's Decameron (only one musical setting of these poems, by Lorenzo da Firenze, survives).
In the 15th century both Arnold de Lantins and Guillaume Dufay wrote ballate; they were among the last to do so.