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Armchair Traveller

A day at the races

Tom Norrington-Davies

Wednesday, 30th May 2007

When I heard you could now take a train to Lhasa I wondered, glumly, if there was any such thing as a forbidden city any more. In early July, and in mid-August, Siena is a battleground. The citizens of this ancient Tuscan city haven’t started frogmarching foreigners out of town — as indignant Tibetans used to — but at least twice a year it is best to keep a low profile. While you are genuinely invited to come and watch, certain tantric elements of the event are jealously guarded by locals.

You may know the Palio as a crazy, mediaeval bare-backed horse race, but that is only half the story. Some of the rituals look quaint to outsiders but locally it is taken incredibly seriously. This, said Marco (an impassioned participant) is why some Sienese object to the Palio being televised. ‘Outsiders think it’s a joke. They laugh at the costumes,’ he told me. I had to stifle a grin of my own. Half the city was running round dressed like the cast of Romeo and Juliet. The analogy is not wholly inappropriate. The feuding Montagues and Capulets had nothing on the Palio.

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