Twice a year, Siena loses its mind in the best possible way. The Palio — a bareback horse race around the Piazza del Campo that lasts approximately ninety seconds — has been running since the Middle Ages and shows no signs of calming down.
The real drama isn't the race. It's everything else: the months of negotiation, the neighbourhood rivalries that predate most nation states, the flags, the drums, the elaborate pageantry that fills the square before a single horse moves. Siena is divided into seventeen contrade — districts, each with its own animal, its own colours, its own centuries-long grudges. You are born into your contrada. You die in it. The tortoise does not forgive the porcupine.
This is not a metaphor.
Our Palio collection borrows from all of it — the heraldry, the colour, the very specific swagger of a city that has been doing things its own way since the thirteenth century.
We couldn't make all seventeen mascots, so we picked eight: the Panther, the Crested Porcupine, the Giraffe, the Wave, the Tortoise, the Snail, the She-Wolf, the Unicorn. Each one carries its contrada's actual heraldry, reproduced in the same red, blue, gold, and black that's been painted on flags and balconies since way back when.
Pick your allegiance and set the table accordingly.
If you happen to find yourself in Siena this July or August — the races run on the 2nd and 16th — the dish to order is pici: thick, hand-rolled pasta that looks like it was made by someone who had better things to do than make it uniform.
Three places worth knowing:
Osteria Il Grattacielo, Via Pontani — open since 1840, small enough that standing guests can touch the ceiling (the name means skyscraper, which is the joke). The menu changes daily, the pici is the point, and it is almost entirely full of locals.
Osteria Permalico, Costa Larga — a short walk from the Campo, known for pici all'aglione, the classic Sienese preparation with garlic and tomato, and tagliatelle with Cinta Senese ragù, made from the prized local pork breed raised in the surrounding hills.
Salefino Vino e Cucina — understated, whitewashed walls, chalkboard menu, wine shelves. The kind of place that doesn't need to try very hard because it has already figured out what it's doing.
Our critical advice? Go hungry. The portions, like the opinions about which contrada is superior, are not modest.
The following events have actually occured at the Palio:
Horses have won the race after their jockey fell off. More than once. A jockey nicknamed "Poison" once yanked a rival clean off his horse mid-race, was banned for ten Palios by the contrade, and then prosecuted by the Italian state — a decision a good portion of Siena considered an outrage, since the contrade had already handled it. The whips are made from stretched ox sinew, and jockeys use them on each other as freely as on the horses. In 1713, two contrade crossed the line so close together that the city simply declared a tie and split the win, the only time it's ever happened. Bribery isn't a scandal here so much as a pre-race ritual — jockeys openly negotiate payoffs in the piazza, in front of thousands of people, hours before the start. One rider has been kidnapped by a rival contrada the night before a race. There are, officially, no rules about interference between horses. There is one rule about reins. Everything else is up for negotiation, including, apparently, the concept of winning.
