★ Palio di Siena

01Why it matters

The Palio is not a historical re-enactment and that is the single thing most visitors get wrong about it. The contrade are living institutions with real membership, real property and real rivalries; babies are baptized into them, and the race is the annual settlement of accounts between them. What the visitor sees is therefore a genuine civic event that happens to be four hundred years old and to take place in one of the finest squares in Europe. In our reading, its place in the international calendar is unusual: it is enormously famous, entirely free to attend in its main form, and almost impossible to understand from outside. The centre of the Campo costs nothing and holds tens of thousands of people; the balconies around it are private property and cost a great deal. Both watch the same ninety seconds. Anyone going should read about the contrade first, arrive several days early for the trials and the street dinners, and accept that the race is the smallest part of the week.

02The week around it

Each Palio is the end of four days of escalating activity, and those days are the reason to come. From the lottery that assigns the horses, six trial races are run in the Campo, morning and evening, each drawing a large crowd for free; the contrade parade through their own streets singing; and on the eve of the race every contrada lays long tables down the middle of its streets for the propitiatory dinner, several hundred people eating outdoors under the flags. Visitors can buy places at some of these dinners through the contrade themselves. On race day the city closes: the Campo fills from mid-afternoon and the entrances are shut once it is full, so anyone wanting a place in the centre must be inside by about four for a race run in the early evening. Siena is otherwise a compact walled hill town of 50,000 people, and in July and August it is hot and heavily visited; the Duomo, the Palazzo Pubblico and the Pinacoteca are all within ten minutes of the Campo and are best seen in the morning.

03When to arrive

Arrive three or four days before the race, not the day of it. The trials, the horse lottery and the street dinners are where the week's real interest lies, they are free or cheap, and the town is at its most alive. On race day itself, be in the Campo by four in the afternoon if you intend to stand in the centre - the gates close when it is full and there is no re-entry, no shade and no way out for several hours. Stay the night of the race: the winning contrada's celebrations run through the streets until dawn and are the best thing that happens all week. Leave the following afternoon.

04Where to stay

Inside the walls is the only sensible choice for the Palio, because the town gates and the roads around them are closed on race day and the walk uphill from outside is long. The streets around the Campo, and the Terzo di Citta and Terzo di San Martino quarters either side of it, put you within five minutes of everything; supply is small and taken far ahead for both Palio dates. The area around Porta Romana and the Fortezza is quieter and still walkable. Outside the walls, the country hotels and agriturismi of the Chianti and the Crete Senesi are twenty to forty minutes away and are the pleasanter option for a longer Tuscan stay, at the cost of the night of the race. Florence, ninety minutes north, is a poor base for the Palio itself.

05Access and hospitality

The centre of the Piazza del Campo is free and unticketed for the trials and for both races, and it is where the great majority of people watch. There is no reservation, no seat and no cover; you arrive early, you stand, and you cannot leave. Everything else is private. The balconies, windows and roof terraces of the palazzi around the square belong to their owners, who let them for the two race days at high prices through agencies and directly; the wooden bleachers built against the buildings are similarly sold by the owners of the frontage they stand on. There is no central box office and no official allocation - this is a private market in private property, and prices and quality vary enormously. The contrade themselves sell places at the eve-of-race dinners, which is the closest thing to accessible hospitality and is arranged directly with each contrada. No prices are quoted here because no organizer publishes any.

06Where the social activity happens

In the streets of the contrade, which is where a visitor should spend the week. Each ward has its own territory, its own bar or clubhouse, its own fountain and church, and during Palio week its streets are hung with flags, occupied by drummers and given over to the long communal dinners. The Campo itself is the public stage for the trials and the race and for the celebrations afterward. Around it, the cafes under the Palazzo Pubblico and along the Banchi di Sopra and Via di Citta take the ordinary trade. There are no private parties in the sense used elsewhere in this calendar: the contrada dinner is the social form here, it happens outdoors on a public street, and outsiders can generally buy a seat at one.

07Getting there

08Practicalities

09History

Races have been held in Siena since the medieval period, and the Palio in something like its present form - run in the Campo, contested by the contrade, on the two fixed dates - dates from the seventeenth century, with the July race established in 1656 in honour of the Madonna di Provenzano and the August race, for the Assumption, added in the following century. The number of contrade was fixed at seventeen in 1729 by a decree of the governor of Siena that also set their boundaries, and those boundaries still stand. The race has survived the fall of the Republic of Siena, unification, two world wars and modern animal-welfare pressure, which has produced real changes: veterinary screening of horses, mattressed barriers, a purpose-built training regime and a register of approved animals. Extraordinary Palios have been run a handful of times for exceptional occasions, most recently in the twenty-first century. The 2020 races were cancelled for the pandemic, the first cancellation in decades.

10Who is there

The Sienese first and overwhelmingly - contrada members of every age, who are the participants rather than the audience, and for whom this is the central event of the year; Italians from Tuscany and beyond; a large international tourist crowd in the centre of the Campo, particularly in August; the private letting market's clients on the balconies; and the racing and equestrian world, in smaller numbers. The gap between the local and visiting experience of this event is wider than at anything else in this calendar.