Reader, please note that I wrote this in the summer of 2010. This is a story for entertainment purposes as certain details are too out of date to be a travel guide.
Bribery, alliances, medieval tradition, grandiose public displays of emotion, danger, violence.
I read about Il Palio in Siena, a bareback horse race that takes place in the main piazza of the city, long before I even arrived in Italy and it was the one thing I really wanted to witness while I was there. I knew Italy in July would be full of tourists, and I knew it would be hard to sift through all the people, the silly Americans and backpackers from all over not even knowing how to say “grazie,” to get a sense for real Italian culture. It was clear to me that some of the more obvious destinations – Venice, for example, or Florence – have authentic traditions that have been dulled in a way, Disney-fied as they are repeated over and over, and now even almost just for the sake of us visitors. I hoped the Palio would be different.
The History of Il Palio
Il Palio is a sporting event so old, that is taken so seriously by the citizens of this small city in Tuscany, that the rules haven’t changed in 800 years. Or rather, the rule. Because there is only one: a jockey cannot grab the reins of another horse. They can kidnap a jockey from an opposing contrade, drug him the night before, or whip him with something made from the skin of a bull’s penis. I knew that a horse can win even if the jockey has fallen off its back. It takes place twice a year, on July 2 and August 16. I knew it was one of the craziest and most popular events in all of Italy.
What I learned was that the Palio is so much more than a horse race with some medieval tradition mixed in. It’s not so much a race based on which horse runs the fastest and makes it safely around the hairpin turns of the Piazza del Campo, but that a lot of wagering and bribery goes on in the days leading up to the race. In Siena 10 out of the city’s 17 contrades – sort of like neighborhoods, but moving in down the block doesn’t get you in, it’s a deeper-rooted familial tradition – have their own horse and jockey. Some of the names of the contrades are lupa (she-wolf), Selva (forest), Tartuca (tortoise), Istrice (crested porcupine), montone (Mountain), leocorno (Unicorn), etc. If the Unicorn and the porcupine are “friends,” porky might pay uni to help block the mountain from getting in the way around a certain turn, if mountain is an enemy to both. There is a lot of money at stake and of course, they’re still dealing with the whims and abilities of the horses on the day of the race.
I went to the Palio on a day tour from the hostel I was staying at in Florence. We arrived in the early afternoon prepared to walk around the medieval center of Siena and take in the pre-race festivities. In the hours leading up to the race, each of the contrades paraded around in full medieval costumes with their horse, putting on a “pageant” and coming face to face on Siena’s winding streets.
The city creates a track by filling some dirt in around the middle of the piazza, where the spectators stand. The piazza itself is fan-shaped and at an interesting, uneven angle which makes it great for watching – no bad seat in the house – but pretty treacherous for the horses and the jockeys. We were told that it was best to get into the piazza by 4:30PM, because after that time they close down all but one entrance which gets totally bottle-necked. The race was set to start at 7:30. That equals 3 hours in the hot, unshaded piazza. When we got there, it hadn’t yet really started filling up…
But pretty soon the crowds started spilling in. Just in time for the 2-hour long parade around the track preceding the actual race.
And then all of a sudden there were people everywhere!
A very different type of sporting event
The most interesting thing about this crowd was that there was no booze – and no major boozers – anywhere. Alcohol wasn’t prohibited from the square, but the Sienese people just didn’t seem interested in getting wasted at such an important sporting event, as though maybe it would be disrespectful to the history and tradition of the race? Or maybe it was just because there were no public restrooms once you entered the piazza. Regardeless, in Italy public drunkenness, even at a dinner table, is absolutely frowned upon and people are much less interested in drinking to get drunk (ahem, maybe we Americans should take note). So the crowd was slightly rowdy but completely focused on the imminent race, sort of like little kids who’ve eaten too many cookies on Christmas Eve.
The race itself was about 90 seconds of madness. A jockey fell off very early on, there was a lot of shouting, some horses tumbled over one another, and then the Forest won. And then people really went crazy. We had been warned that the losing contrades would be extremely angry and upset over an enemy’s victory and not to get in anyone’s face or make jokes about it. People were chanting, singing, screaming, crying, hugging, and otherwise losing their cool.
Rather than take pictures, I held my Flip video camera up and turned around with it as I watched. The result is a video that captures more of what’s going on in the crowd than the actual race, but I also found a link to the Siena TV video of the race which every bar and restaurant around town was playing on a loop right after the race…
My blurry, shaky Il Palio Video on YouTube:
Here is a video from Siena TV that I found on youtube…a much better view of the actual race:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVBCFFN605s
This is the winning horse! They paraded him around for a while after the race. I hope they gave him a victory dinner or something, he definitely deserved it.
The After-Party
After the race, a bunch of us orange-shirt wearers went in search of a party. The beauty of going on the day-tour was that our bus wasn’t leaving until 11PM, whereas the last bus from Siena back to Florence via public transport left at 9. We found our way to a bar where we ordered mojitos (Italians love their mojitos) and met a guy named Massimo. Massimo asked us why we weren’t at the victory party, and said he could tell us where it was and find out from his friends in the Forest contrade if we would be welcome there. I asked him, if he knew where the party was and was friends with members of the winning contrade, why he wasn’t at this victory party? He made a phone call, said we were now officially invited, and off we went with him. I was sure it was a hoax and he was just making a joke out of us because we were a bunch of girls wearing orange t-shirts that said “I survived the Palio of Siena.”
We walked back through the still-parading revelers in the streets into the now-dark Piazza del Campo, which had been turned into a party with cafe tables covered in white tablecloths, people drinking prosecco, dinner being served.
Massimo let us down some dark alleys before we entered a small piazza with a modest-looking white church and a bunch of people outside, some long tables with kegs full of wine, and some friendly locals offering it up to everyone. These turned out to be Massimo’s friends. At first they jokingly made fun of us for wearing their enemy’s colors (orange and blue, instead of their colors which were orange and green), and then they made fun of us for being American, and then they filled our cups to the brim and welcomed us into their party. They made us learn silly Italian phrases in order to ask for more, such as (translation is) “I’m a poor drunk, can you fill me up please?” But it was well worth it, the wine was excellent.
And then they insisted on filling Anna’s water bottle with wine so we could take it for the bus ride. Italian hospitality at its finest!
The church turned out to be the church of the Forest contrade; each contrade has its own church, the basement of which is referred to as “the heart of the contrade” and which opens up only on the day when the contrade wins a palio race. The “heart” is filled with medieval relics dating back to the 14th century onwards – suits of armor, tapestries, trophies etc all to do with winning the palio. It was sort of like a museum, only much dustier.
Siena doesn’t Disney-fy anything. What was so amazing about the Palio experience was that while the event is 100% authentic, filled with history and tradition, and something that unless you’re Sienese you can only begin to understand it, tourists were totally welcome to be there to enjoy it. While the contrades were focused and emotional over the meanings of it all, they wanted to party with us anyway.