Il Palio

I’ll thank serendipity for bringing Kyle and I to the Palio. It just so happened that we were going to be in town for what our guidebook called Italy’s most spectacular festival event. This event, known as the Siena Palio is a twice-yearly bareback horse race around the Campo, a central plaza that draws the entire city and thousands of visitors to the city center.

The event is rather remarkable. Each of Siena’s seventeen communities, or contrades, enters a horse and jockey into the competition. Ten are selected at random to participate in the anarchistic event. The concept is simple. Each participating horse completes three laps around the Campo, the first to cross the finish line, with or without jockey, is declared the victor. The only rule is that jockeys are not permitted to interfere with the reigns of another jockey. Other than that, it’s war. In the past, communities have drugged horses and jumped jockeys on the way to the race. Our personal observation affirmed that it is, in fact, a bloodbath. We witnessed jockey’s lashing competitor horses with their switches; we witnesses jockey’s successfully pulling their fellow jockey’s off their horses. One turn in the Campo is so abrupt that they pad the side with mattresses; this cushion collision is a popular location for jockeys to be propelled from the horses’ backs.

Of course, Kyle and I (okay, me in particular) hate feeling like outsiders, so we needed to buy a bandera to support one of the contrades. Kyle admitted allegience to the pantera to which I was amenable. After all, my middle school, Rachel Carson Middle School, had elected the Panther as its mascot. Although, the final vote came down to Panther and Furry Woodland Creature, which I’m sure received the most votes, but I’m convinced that the school was embarrassed to embrace the furry woodland wonder and assumed the runner-up Panther as its official mascot. So we purchased our red, white, and blue bandanas (we’re Tea Party patriots after all) with the panther print and took our places along the Campo’s inner rail. Since we assumed our position at noon, and since the actual race didn’t begin until 7:30pm, we were able to secure front rail seats.

Front rail seats, man, they are comfortable. They were not comfortable. It was fine around lunchtime, but as more and more people tried to get closer and closer to the rail, there was less and less foot room. At times I felt like I was doing ballet because there wasn’t enough surface area for my entire foot to make love with the ground; just the tips.

The ninety second race was incredible. Well worth the seven hour wait. I mean, I’ve been to similar events before but this one is really one of a kind. The United States would never be able to replicate such an event. The main reason is because two hours before the horse race begins, everyone inside the tracks is locked in, without a bathroom. How 12,000 people can go 2.5 hours without a single one having an emergency is unfathomable. That’s a combined 30,000 weeless hours. It’s times like these that make me realize that there is such a thing as God and divine intervention.