Destinations
When to visit Siena, where to stay inside the walls, and what to eat, with a reading of the Campo, the Duomo, and the living contrade that day-trippers never see.
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The Palio di Siena: a year of devotion, ninety seconds of war
Twice each summer a Tuscan city covers Piazza del Campo in earth and runs a bareback horse race that decides nothing and means everything. Understanding the seventeen contrade is understanding Siena itself.
Destinations
Altitude and water: northern Italy in summer, from the Dolomites to the great lakes
A guide to the season the heat and the crowds never reach, from hut-to-hut walking in the Dolomites to the slow light of the Italian lakes.
Experiences
The best Italian summer festivals and sagre of 2026
The season runs on two calendars: ticketed cultural festivals programmed years ahead, and the village sagre and patron-saint feasts a community holds for itself. A guide to choosing the right summer evening in Italy in 2026.
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Twice each summer, on 2 July and 16 August, Siena hands its shell-shaped Campo over to a bareback horse race that lasts about ninety seconds and means everything. The Palio is not a spectacle staged for visitors but a rite the city has never stopped performing, run between the seventeen contrade that organize Sienese life all year. This collection covers it: when to go, where to watch, how the four days unfold, and what the race reveals about the city behind it.
All in Palio di Siena
When to visit Siena, where to stay inside the walls, and what to eat, with a reading of the Campo, the Duomo, and the living contrade that day-trippers never see.
The Italian summer is not one season, it is several: running from the first heat of late May to the stillness of late September when the crowds have gone and the country becomes, briefly, entirely itself. This is a guide to navigating it well: where to go when Puglia fills up, what August means in a country that takes Ferragosto seriously, why September in Tuscany rewards those who planned ahead.
All in Summer 2026
Twice each summer a Tuscan city covers Piazza del Campo in earth and runs a bareback horse race that decides nothing and means everything. Understanding the seventeen contrade is understanding Siena itself.
