Palio Daze

 

The week of the July Palio is over and the city has calmed. Most of the tourists have left and the only reminders of the four-day ritualized horse race that ended Thursday evening are the drums Tartuca (the winning contrada) and the newspaper headlines about health of horses and the intrigue of the jockeys.

 

The Palio is the name of the horse race that is held twice a year (July 2 and August 16) by the Sienese in honor of the Virgin Mary (there are some years where a third “extraordinary” Palio is run to commemorate some important event, e.g. the first lunar landing – the Palio of the Moon was won by Oca [the Goose]) . The winner of the race receives the Palio – a painted silk banner. Both the name of the race and the piece of cloth bear the name Palio.

 

The competitors in the race are the various neighborhoods or precincts of the city that are called contrada (singular) and contrade (pl.). There are 17 contrade in the city, but only 10 run in any given Palio. During the middle ages the contrade were given their coherence by professional solidarity, e.g. the many of the members of the contrada of Onda (the Wave) were carpenters, the members of Oca were dyers, the members of Valdimontone (Ram) were smiths of fine metals, and so on. Today this is less the case, and so the Palio itself has taken over as the external fiction around which contrada life is explicitly oriented. Each contrada has its own social club, church, museum, kitchens, and designated feast days. The habits and rituals of contrada life effectively make the Palio a year round event – the community practices come to a crescendo in the race and the race is the event or the act that constitutes and makes possible the practices – the contrade and the Palio mutually define one another. This was less the case in the middle ages when greater internal coherence lessened the importance of the Palio.

 

The Palio is an elaborately orchestrated four-day event. Day 1 for us started on Monday with the Trata. This is when 30 or so horses are brought into the city for a set of trial races where they are on display to the captains of the contrade (the individuals chosen to direct the strategic energies of the contrada to win the Palio). The 30 horses run in groups of no more than eight. After they’ve all run the captains may decide to have a group of horses (likely horses that have never run in a Palio before) to have another go. Once all this is finished the captain deliberate for an hour or two and decide which ten horses will run. The best horses will not necessarily be picked. This is especially true if there are a number of enemy pairs in the race (most contrade have one enemy, e.g. Oca and Torre).  One way to lose the Palio is to have your enemy win. Thus if your contrada has recently won a Palio and your enemy has not, you would not want a fantastic horse to be in the race because you run the risk of your enemy getting that horse.  After the ten horses have been picked they are randomly assigned to the ten contrade that are participating in that particular Palio – this ceremony takes place in the Campo in front of 30,000 people. There is rejoicing and cursing based on the assignments. This year the contrade of Tartuca, Drago, and Istrice got the best horses (horses that had all previously won Palios). Once the horse is assigned it is taken by the members of the contrade back to the contrada to a stall where it will live, guarded under 24hr surveillance, during the days of the Palio.

 

Once the horses have been assigned the contrade go into contract with jockeys. The better the contrada’s horse, the more ambitiously the contrada will spend on a good jockey. Istrice (the porcupine) went after the best jockey – Trecciolino. He has won 11 Palios. A good jockey does not come cheap. The best are paid upwards of a half a million EUR.

 

The jockeys and horses first appear together on Monday night, the night of the first trial race – prova. This was, however, rained out. The trial races continue through the days of the Palio – 9:00 in the morning and 19:45 in the evening. The evening events draw enormous crowd (40,000ish). Tempers flare. On Tuesday night a fight broke out between Chiocciola and Tartuca. Many punches were thrown, but very few landed. Such outbreaks are typical and are much more postured and performed than anything else. The older men of the contrade are an internal policing mechanism for the contrade. They do not want the contrada to be penalized so they will work to control the hormones of the younger boys. However, in this case, S saw a man in his 50s being taken away with blood all over.

 

The penultimate trial race, called the Prova Generale, takes place 24hrs before the Palio. After the race all the running contrade will have huge feasts on the principal streets of their neighborhood. Onda’s feast was on the Via Giovanni Dupre. S and I went to their dinner along with the rest of the group. It was a 4-course meal punctuated by contrada songs and speeches. There was also a thunderstorm that passed through so our table (of about 100) held a long piece of plastic over our heads for about 15min.

 

One of the tragedies of this year’s Palio happened at the Prova Generale. During the Prova the horse of Civetta (the Owl) pulled up limping after the first big turn. We hadn’t noticed this because our eyes were on the front of the race.  The Civettini, however, had. Before the race was over they sprinted across the track to the street where their horse had exited. Their worst nightmares had been realize – the horse (Iesael) was injured and would not be able to run. This came as a particularly hard blow to Civetta, the contrada that bears the ignominious distiction “La Nonna” – Grandmother – because they have not won a Palio since 1979. They cancelled their dinner and cried themselves to sleep.  The headline in the newspaper the next morning read: “Civetta in lacrime.” It was sad.

 

The last prova on the morning of the day of the race is called the provaccia – the bad prova. No one wants to win.  After the provaccia there is a “Palio mass” at the church of the Provenzano. The Palio is present for the mass. It’s a great time to get a close up view of the banner.

 

In the mid-afternoon a long and intricate parade begins. The parade recounts the entirety of Sienese history in addition to showcasing the contrade that are running, those that aren’t, and representatives of the contrade that don’t exist anymore (the so-called “suppressed contrade”).  The parade eventually makes its way to the Campo where it reaches a crescendo – flag throwing, drumming, and even a cavalry charge from soldiers that I’m sure were once part of Garibaldi’s army that march on Rome.

 

Eventually, after much standing in a crowd of 60,000, the horses and jockeys emerge from the Palazzo Pubblico. The mass of people comes to a near complete silence as they wait to hear the order in which the horses will line up. It’s really a rather magical thing. Once the order has become clear the arduous process of getting everyone in place begins. This year it was particularly frustrating – Istrice and Chiocciola were very obstreperous. There were two false starts and lots of jockeying at the starting rope – the canape.

 

After a good half an hour of this there was clean(ish) start. Tartuca’s horse (Gia de Menhir ridden by Gingillo) got off to a great start and was followed closely by Lupa [she-wolf] around the first curve (San Martino). Soon after, however, the gap increased and continued to do so for the rest of the 73 second race. Gia de Menhir, as the paper later proclaim, was a “war machine”. It ran the second fastest Palio ever.  Both Istrice’s and Onda’s horses were injured in the race so they very quickly fell off the pace.

 

The Tartuchini spilled onto the track, kissed the horse, and carried the jockey on their shoulders as they ran to claim the Palio. They’ve been marching around the city with it ever since. 

Watch this year's July Palio:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFvKFTuOtJs