Siena and the Palio

Siena’s history is a proud one. According to legend, the city was founded by Senius, son of Remus, who was in turn the brother of Romulus, after whom Rome was named. The Roman origin accounts for the town's emblem—a she-wolf suckling the infants Romulus and Remus. Statues and other artwork depicting a she-wolf suckling the young twins can be seen all over the city of Siena. In the Middle Ages, Siena rose to greatness as a spot on the Via Francigena, the pilgrimage route from Northern Europe to Rome. Siena flourished as one of Europe’s largest cities from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, larger than Paris or London and rivaling Florence. Artistic projects proliferated, filling Siena with Gothic masterpieces. In 1348, the plague hit, killing three quarters of the Sienese population. This combined with a banking failure left Siena a shadow of its former powerful self. Centuries of struggle against Florence ended in 1555, when Siena was the last Tuscan city to fall to Medici Florence.

Isolated, defeated, and subjugated, Siena has become a wonderful historical fossil, and when it really comes down to it, in the debased Tuscany of today, she is the winner. Go and see the Palio and attempt to understand it. If you do, then you will realize that you have not seen a game, or a festival, but something truly unique in anthropology, the secret and hidden (well, perhaps not so hidden) motive force of a city. In it are the courage, ferocity, pride, thirst for adventure and love of hazard of one of the greatest and most glorious peoples on the face of the earth.

—Franco Cardini, Tuscany

Thus, as Cardini demonstrates, the fall of Siena is precisely what preserves it as a medieval treasure in post-Renaissance Italy, but also a chance to observe the raw spirit and rhythms of a long-refined and authentic culture.

Siena proper can warrant years of exploration. Its Roman grid is a maze of concentric circles and spidery arteries pumping from the central Piazza del Campo, one of Europe’s largest and most picturesque piazzas. Here, one finds Siena’s most characteristic monument, the Palazzo Publico with its Mangia Tower offering an outstanding view of the city and its surrounding countryside. The palace houses a museum of Sienese painting, including Martini’s Maesta, the Middle Ages’ largest painting, and perhaps its most famous, Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government. In the surrounding city, a wealth of palaces and churches demonstrate civic and non-secular architecture. Siena’s Santa Maria Assunta, a twelfth century cathedral, rivals Florence as a dictionary of Italian greats. Its collection includes a pulpit by Nicola Pisano and Arnolfo di Cambio, sculptures by Michelangelo, Pinturicchio’s frescoed Piccolomini library, and frescoes by Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, and Jacopo della Quercia. For the art lover, no other location in Italy can offer the wealth and quality of medieval works than within Siena’s protective walls.

A day of art might begin with an art history lecture, designed to familiarize viewers with the visual tools and terminology applicable to this particular field of art. Such a base naturally takes visual art and architecture from its figurative high pedestal and makes it more approachable, empowering the viewer to form his or her own deductions and preferences. The day continues in Siena, where opportunities abound to see medieval art in an ideal setting, in the Duomo, the Palazzo Publico, and the city’s art museums. End your tour of the Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo by climbing the incomplete westwork of what would have been Italy’s largest cathedral had not the plague and various banking failures so crippled the city. The skeleton of the never-realized church stands today a reminder of the city’s former greatness. From above, plot your course back to Siena’s famous Campo, where you might sit and watch the crowds while taking in an afternoon aperitivo before returning to Finocchieto.

If what you seek to experience abroad is an authentic slice of life, little can top Siena’s Palio race, held every July 2 and August 16. On these days, the city’s historic neighborhoods, called “contrade”, compete in a no holds barred, bareback horserace around the city’s main piazza, the Campo, which is covered in dirt and lined with protective mattresses for the occasion. Passions are high and the city pulsates with the combined excitement of its 60,000 inhabitants and many visitors.

The race is, however, merely the culmination of a year round cultural phenomenon. Siena is the only place in the world where by tradition, all Christian children are baptized twice, first in the customary individual ceremony, second in a once-yearly mass baptism held in his or her contrada’s historic fountain and chapel. There, on the day of that particular contrada’s patron saint, the year’s worth of new babies are baptized into the contrada. It is a title that is carried with pride through a lifetime, and one that is quite difficult to achieve by any other rite than by birth. It is said that to a Sienese, one’s contrada supersedes any other titles or obligations, besides those to one’s immediate family. It is easy to see the tight control of Sienese life imposed by the contrade, visibly in the brightly colored flags that mark each neighborhood and the crowds of children who gather in the streets, practicing cadences and flag tossing for the honor of representing their contrade in upcoming parades. Less visible, the Sienese will tell you that the contrade are responsible for the city’s low rates of drug use and idleness among teenagers, for civic pride and upkeep, even well stocked blood banks in the city’s hospital. It is a society that fiercely takes care of its own.

A day spent in study of the Palio and the Sienese contrade might begin with a screening of a short film describing the Palio and showing footage of the actual horserace. For the active visitor, a day is well spent trekking Siena’s neighborhoods to visit each contrada’s characteristic fountain, of which there are seventeen in total, while observing daily life all around. Lunch in the Campo affords a chance for leisurely people watching and a chance to imagine the city on race day. A less strenuous tour of the city could involve more in-depth visits to one partic.ular contrada, touring its fountain, chapel, and museum, open by appointment only, which houses artwork, artifacts, and the collection of Palio (banners) that are the prize and namesake of the yearly races. Your tourguide will be an authentic contrada member and sure to offer a truly authentic and unforgettable glimpse at these unique institutions.

Mauro Civai and Enrico Toti’s Palio: the Race of the Soul (ALSABA, Siena, 2002) is a beautiful volume dedicated to Siena and the Palio:

…we inherit the fatherland
we don’t choose it
only after it is lost
he who has limbs and heart
cannot waver like a willow:
but here I, in any case,
would seek a contrada, at least
it will give me the illusion of living
and make me feel that I am a man

—Gianni Brera

The very unique urban composition of Siena, which is virtually intact and much the same as it was originally in ancient times, clearly represents a strong element to which of necessity they conform. This urban awareness has been the model with which of necessity they have had to live, and they have enjoyed doing do.

The Palio is probably the event which best unveils this way of life. The Sienese completely dedicate themselves to it happening, which to them is a way of making contact with eternity.

—Mauro Civai and Enrico Toti