The Palio Of Siena

35 horses ready to challenge and the streets of Siena (Tuscany) smells of excitement. There are many Italian traditions out there but this one in particular, it’s dear to my heart. I’m Tuscan so I grew up with the myth of the Palio of Siena.

An event that moves a whole city throughout the year, which makes the summer unique and for me it is synonymous of warmth, party and, indeed, summer.

I tried to bring home something different, not the usual horses and jockeys pictures, but the backstage and the life in town while waiting for the long-awaited horse race.

Flags, colors, tourists and locals into parades, festivals and all over the usual everyday routine simply more colorful. This is a long term project started this year (2017) so it will be updated constantly.

Three years have passed since the last Palio di Siena, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. At the idea that this year it would show itself again in all its magnificence, I decided to return to Siena for this project, one day before as usual to continue to tell the atmosphere without the presence of horses and riders but exclusively through ordinary people and their competitive spirit.

The situation I found in 2022 was really different from how I imagined it: Piazza del Campo, usually crowded with people, this time was semi-deserted with the Contrade (districts) preparing for their traditional baptism.

It is not a religious baptism but a lay one, which has the purpose of “sacralizing” perpetual belonging to one’s own Contrada. It is a relatively recent custom (1949) that has found fertile ground and has assumed full citizenship among the Sienese traditions. Young people and adults who have never been baptized before are admitted to the rite. Each district created, in the second half of the twentieth century, a “baptismal fountain” in the district’s territory.

This form of belonging was introduced within the Contrade due to the displacement of the population from the historic center to the suburbs, and the construction of the hospital outside the city walls and therefore outside the territory of any district.

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