Monday – 5th Week: Siena Palio

Up at 6am to get on the road by 7am to get to Siena to see The Palio. I’d seen a documentary on The Palio a couple of years ago and had always wanted to see it, if the chance ever came up. The Palio is a bare back horse race, run round the Piazza Del Campo (main town square) in Siena. The race, has been run since before the 14th century and is contested by 10 of the 17 Contrades (districts in Siena) each year. The seven that don’t compete one year are automatic starters the following year and the other 3 are drawn by ballot. The Contrades draw which horse they will get to race four days before the race and then there is practice races round the square in the days leading up to the Palio.

To be honest, we didn’t know much about the format for the day, but assumed that Siena would be very busy for that day, so we were there and parked by 8am to get to experience some of the pageantry of the day. We arrived at the Piazza just before 9am in time to see the final practice, before the race gets run at 7:30 at night.

The Piazza del Campo is usually surrounded by restaurants, but for The Palio, very steep grandstands are erected against the buildings surrounding the Piazza, with a wooden fence to separate the horses from the spectators (see the photos). The track is only about 20-30 feet wide, with soil packed down for the horses to run on. Wooden fences on the other side of the track are used to separate the horses with the spectators who crowd the centre of the Piazza to watch the event.

If you’ve ever been to the Piazza del Campo in Siena, you will know that it is not flat, but dips in the centre to create a rather uneven bowl shape. This and its unusual shape (a misshaped semi circle) all add to the complexity of the race for the horses and riders – bare back remember.

The practice is to get the riders used to the horses and the horses used to the track, but doesn’t involve the start, which is where the race is really won or lost.

To add more interest, the jockeys are all dodgy characters who are subject to bribery and the Contrades all participate in bribing opposing jockeys to throw the race, block opposing horses etc – it’s all real dirty stuff, but what fun.

Finally, the horses start the race between two ropes which they enter according to the order that they have drawn. The race starts when the last horse enters the starting block, but the last horse can chose when he enters. The last horse holds all the cards, and the jockeys are all negotiating and doing deals right up to the time that the race starts – you can see them talking to each other as they parade at the start of the race.

Anyway, enough of the history and explanation. We arrived in time to see the practice from the outside edge of the Piazza. Once that was finished, the gates were opened and we were able to walk onto the track to see the horses and riders paraded around the square by their various Contrades.

There were people already camped out in positions beside the wooden fences for the race that wasn’t going to be held for another 10 hours. We then went to the tourist information centre to find out what the agenda for the day was. The 9am practice was the last one before the race. The square gets closed off at 4:30 and there are no toilets, drink or food facilities within the square. We decided that as we’d have to be in the square well before 4:30 (say 2:00) and wouldn’t get out until at least 8:30, that we’d soak up the atmosphere in the town, see the parade from the Duomo to the Piazza which started at 4:45 and then try and catch the race itself on TV.

Having checked out the Piazza, we headed off around the town to check out the different Contrades, which are divided along street lines. The Contrades haven’t changed since the 18 century and all the streets are done out in flags and some of the more energetic Contrades even have beautifully decorated light stands, so it makes the whole thing look really splendid (see photos). In some streets, there are the flags of one Contrade on one side and the flags of another Contrade on the other if that is a boundary line.

Siena without the Piazza restaurants is a town with a bit of a lack of outdoor restaurants, so for one of the few times on holiday we ate lunch in an indoor restaurant. After lunch, we went and did some shopping where Anne went nuts in a leather shop. Just as she was finishing off her purchases, drums started beating out on the street and one of the Contrades marched past with their drummer, flag wavers (2), flag bearer, knight and page boys (6). After them was a procession of all the ‘regular’ members of the Contrade – normally dressed people wearing the Contrade’s scarf.

We started to follow the Contrade up the street, when another one came by, so we stopped in a little alleyway to watch them. Because we’d walked a distance up the street, we were now outside one of the civic buildings and the Contrade stopped and did its flag waving act outside the building. The flags are enormous on big poles, and the flag wavers wave them around in time to their drummer. The flag waving comes to a climax as the flag get swirled faster and faster while the flag wavers gradually wrap the flags around the pole. When there all wound up, they throw them high in the air, where the flag unfurls. The flags are thrown so that they cross in mid air and are caught by the other flag waver. This is all done in a very narrow street. With one of the Contrades, I was standing right behind them and you get feel the draft from the flag and pole as they were swirled round in front of my face. Despite this, we got to watch all the Contrades do their act and not one flag was dropped and nobody in the crowd get hurt.

After that we went up to the Duomo, and watched the procession – which is kind of the same thing we’d just seen on the street, except there are trumpets and a brass section as well as all the other characters.

The procession finished at the Duomo at about 5:30, and as there weren’t any big screens around to watch the race (they weren’t really doing it for the tourists, I must say), so we headed back to Citta Della Pieve to watch it from our hotel room. By that stage, we’d been on our feet for a long time, so were glad to get our shoes off after a long day.

The race itself - now as I mentioned earlier, the last horse holds the cards as to when the race starts. We caught the build up from 7:00, with more flag waving etc. Then at 7:30 the horses get called into the starting box. The first horses all went in a stood there, but by the time 6 of the 10 were in, they were all barging each other and trying to block their opponents. After about a minute 9 of the 10 horses were in the starting box, and then the 10th one just stood there, outside the box, the jockey swinging his leg nonchalantly obviously waiting for when whatever jockey he’d done a deal with got in the correct position. This went on for 10 minutes all the while, the 9 other horses and jockeys were barging and shoving each other. Finally it got really messy and they all filed out of the start box. So, do it all again – 9 horses in, 10th leg swinging nonchalantly, then they broke the starting rope. Do it all again – barge shove for 10 minutes – all march out of the starting box again.

Finally at about 8:20, number 10 for no apparent reason enters the start box and as soon as the first hoof is in, they're all off. One horse made a brilliant start and was 20 metres ahead of the field with another horse in hot pursuit (no. 10 by the way never got higher than 9th, so he must have got rich reward from one of the Contrades). They charged around the Piazza 3 times, one horse fell at the first corner and the riderless horse nearly caused an upset on the very last corner of the race by running the wrong way around the track and nearly hitting the lead horse on the blind corner. Anyway, the horse in pursuit didn’t quite get up to take the race, so the bolter was the winner, second place is called “the loser” and nobody else counts – brilliant. After a whole day of pageantry and 45 minutes of build up, the race itself is over in around 2 minutes.

There was some confusion at the end, as the pursuing horse’s Contrade felt that they had won, but the TV replay showed they hadn’t so a major fight was averted. The winning Contrade gets the Palio, which is a banner created by a sienese artist – there’s a new one for each Palio, so the Contrade gets to keep their Palio for ever. The oldest Palio in existence dates back to about the 18th century.