Siena has an incredibly strong cultural identity completely surrounding the “Palio,” a 10 minute horse race that is in reality a 4 month cultural celebration. Siena is broken into different neighborhoods or “contradas” and each one has its own flag, mascot, and horse in the race. Palio occurs every year in “Piazza del Campo,” an oddly shaped track that causes many injuries during the race.
Palio is something that affects every person in Siena, and I am convinced they have an entire class on it at some point during their education because each person I talked to about Palio knew everything there was to know about it. In a country where soccer dominates all sports conversations, to see a town where the biggest thing was a race that only happened once a year and only by residents of this small town of 80,000 people is pretty special. I wondered what they would think about an ND tailgate
