Palio di Siena

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.