Today I shall be talking about the Palio.
Yesterday was the Palio, so that meant a day off - hooray! The Palio is an ancient horse race around the central square (Piazza il palio) in Siena, contested by 10 horses, occuring twice a year. It is THE thing that Siena is famous for, and has been contested, albeit in various guises, for 600 years or so. Oh, and it appeared at the beginning of the last James Bond movie.
The city is divided into 17 contrade (districts) each with a different flag, colour scheme, animal. The Sienese are incredibly passionate about their contrade and the warring factions between different contrade are very strong. Fighting is common, and a pair of contrade, usually geographically next to each other, will have a particularly strong hatred of each other. One fun thing about the palio is that it is not in any way artificial, unlike other historical things I have seen e.g. trouping the colour yadda yadda yadda. The people of Siena live it and breathe it. It is totally important to them and really drives the whole city forward. Practice fo the drumming and marching and raising of the money for bribery (see below) happens all year round. Tears and excitement and anger during the palio are real.
The term "palio" means flag or cloth - and this is the prize of the Palio - a commissioned and bautifully tapestered cloth, one made for each time the palio runs, which is 2nd July and 16th August every year.
The palio of yesterday was expected to be a tragedy, since that all the four contrade which have green in their colours were running - and so it turned out to be. On Sunday night there was a dinner for a particular contrada which had a tragedy. The contrada dinners are famous - long rows of tables set out in the streets in that particular contrada with lots of people feasting and celebrating around palio time. For one of the contrada, a french envoy, or visiting dignitary, aged 77, was hit by some masonary which fell from a bank in Piazza Tolomei, killing him. Then one of the horses got injured before the race and did not run. Then during the marches and processions which happen before the palio is run, which includes drumming, war songs, trumpeting, flag waving, there is a point where all the contrade flag bearers line up and see who can throw their flags the highest. Well, one went awry, and it was the one from the contrada who had killed the french dignitary, and hit someone in the crowd and injured them.
The race itself was good but no great excitement - tartuca (tortoise) set off into the lead, followed hotly by istrice (porcupine), the rest merely also rans. Tartuca held the lead until the end.
There are some interesting Italian observances during the palio which I shall highlight - at the end of the palio, there had been during the lining up of the horses some fighting between the jockeys of two of the contrade that have a history of being big enemies. At the end of the palio there was a lot of posturing and shirt-taking off-ing from the guys from the two contrade, but typically, nothing kicked off - just when everyone was looking forward to a good fight! At the beginning of the race, they have to line all the horses up in the correct order. These horses tend to be juiced up, like the jockeys, and they are ridden bareback. This means that it can be difficult to line them all up. This is further complicated by of the ten of them racing, 9 of them lining up, and the tenth hanging back. The race will not start until both the 9 are in line, in the right order and the 10th jockey decides it's time to go. This means that the 10th jockey controls the race. This means that during the lining up for the race, the jockeys try to bribe the tenth jockey into not going until they are in the best position. The contrade raise money all year to have a big enough bribe to that tenth jocky. So, classic Italian society. This also means that it takes approximately half an hour, of jockeying for position (pun intentional) until the race actually starts.
Access to the best points in the race requires you to be there hours and hours beforehand, however, we turned up about 2 hours beforehand and joined the crazy rush and throng of people trying to get into the square before the final gate into the square closed. This time it was myself, Dawn and my parents and thankfully it wasn't too hot, maybe 28C, so it wasn't too sweaty and smelly in the very intimate crowd. Italians have a different approach to public space, and also rather than asking to be excused if looking for something in the supermarket for example, just push through and get it. This isn't rude, it's just the way it is in Italy. However, it takes a while to get the hang of this not being rude, and some took some time to get it.
The palio is free, unless you go for one of the seats around the edges or one of the windows in the buildings on the square. Also, there are some stalls in the square which sell cheap water and drinks and snakcs - which is amazing, from my experience of venues in the UK, or anywhere. Well done Italy.
After the palio, and after the fighting, I mean juvenile posturing, had finished we decided to grab a slice of pizza (absolutely friggin huge!) and watch the people making their way off. We sat on some of the seats that would have cost €400 a ew minutes earlier and watcehd the people buzz around. The Italians managed to completely clean the square of debris and rubbish within about thirty minutes - an amazing and gargantuan, and highly efficient effort which I thought was incredible.
And there exists the dichotomy of Italian life, crazy manic and disorgnaized, coupled with passion, appropriateness and efficiency.
Ciao ciao.
JJ
