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Europe
THE PALIO – SUMMER IN SIENA
THE PALIO – SUMMER IN SIENA
By Andréa R. Vaucher
Dateline: Siena, Italy; May 10, 2007
A four-minute read.
If the only time you can get to Tuscany is during the coming high-priced/high-traveled months of July and August, you can actually turn that minus into a plus by heading towards Siena, a gem of an ancient walled city.
Nestled in vine and olive tree-covered rolling hills under an azure sky strewn with wondrous white clouds that could turn the staunchest non-believer into a pious soul, Siena, Florence’s historic rival, has all the architectural complexity and richness of its northern neighbor without any inconveniences associated with a larger city such as traffic (the center of Siena is closed to vehicles), pollution, or noise.
And here, summer is the best time to visit. It’s when Sienese life revolves around one of the most dramatic and anachronistic public spectacles in all of Europe—the Palio—a bareback horse race run at death-defying speeds around the town’s central Campo, one of the most gorgeous piazzi in Italy.
The race, which has been run since the 1300s, happens twice a year—July 2 and Aug 16—and pits the city’s seventeen neighborhoods or contrade against each other. Until you’ve walked Siena’s cobblestone streets on the days preceding each race, you can’t possibly imagine the passion behind the rivalries and alliances that have formed over the course of seven centuries.
If you are born in Siena, you are born into a contrada—here it’s contrada before country; your neighborhood is the center of your universe and every year culminates with the running of the Palio. Husbands and wives born into different contrade separate during the weeks leading up to the Palio; “it’s not so much that my contrada wins, but that my enemy’s loses,” I was informed by a Sienese aristocrat who rents out his apartment overlooking the Campo for $10,000 during the afternoon of the race.
Each contrada is named after an animal—the snail, the porcupine, the elephant—and has a breathtakingly colorful banner. During the summer, these banners fly from every window in the city and neighboring environs, and one is draped around the neck of every contrada member.
Ten horses run in July, with the remaining seven (plus three others drawn by chance) running in August. The jockeys come from Sardinia and are never trusted—the night before the race, they are sequestered in the contrada they are racing for so that they can’t make deals, like splitting the approximately $200,000 purse.
In the days leading up to the races, it seems that everyone in the city is in the streets. The exhilaration is palpable and it’s fun to align oneself with a contrada and get in on the excitement.
Agencies, such as In Italy Online (www.initaly.com), can arrange for you to attend a contrada banquet on the night before the race, where you’ll dine with the locals at long tables set up in the streets.
In Italy Online can also arrange for you to watch the race from a window in a private apartment overlooking the Campo (approximately 300-350 euro per person). Other alternatives would be to crowd into the center of the Campo with thousands of other Sienese or watch the race and the pre-race pageantry on television in an air-conditioned caffe in one of the competing contrada.
The race itself is heart stopping, but it’s over in 90 seconds, an anti-climax to weeks of excitement, parades, costumes, colors, and fabulous Tuscan cuisine. The winning horse is taken directly to the Duomo, with what seems like the entire town following. Suddenly no matter what contrada one belongs to, everyone angles to touch the flanks of the winning beast—a guarantee of buona fortuna until the next Palio.
Sidebar
HOTEL CASTELLO DI CASOLE
If you have reason to put off your Tuscan holiday until summer 2008, it may just be worth waiting.
At that time, The Timbers Company, owners of Esperanza in Cabo San Lucas and The Timbers Club in Snowmass, will open a private luxury retreat on their 4,200-acre estate twenty miles west of Siena.
The centerpiece of Castello di Casole will be this 5-star boutique hotel, created from the estate’s Tuscan castle. Sitting atop the highest hill on the property, with panoramic views of the area’s iconic landscape, the 38-room hotel will feature a world-class spa with treatments inspired by the region’s plants and fragrances. The hotel’s fine dining restaurants will open onto terraces and an infinity pool, and will showcase the area’s famous cuisine.
Castello presently offers 4500- to 7000- square foot villas, created from restored farmhouse ruins, in fractional and whole ownership.
Editor’s Note: Andréa was often high on the masthead at Biztraveler—the e-zine of the business scene that I created during the heady days of dot.coms. I love her style (she writes well, too!), and we’ve become fast friends. Ted
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Please email me your travel tales, "postcards," and questions. I'll publish the most interesting, appropriate or outrageous in Correspondence - All the best, Ted (short for Edward)
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