Palio

Well, this post is a bit late, but better than never. As mentioned before, Il Palio was on the 16th August, and there was such a lead up to this event, I couldn't wait to see what the actual event was like, but this year was a particular weird year. The one thing that I know which made world news was that there was a French man that died here during the festival of Il Palio. For those that didn't hear, leading up to 16th, each contrada has a dinner on the 2 nights before which is open to anyone from the contrada (unofficially not to foreigners, but I did go to one for dinner on the 14th), but on the 15th August at contrada Civetta during the dinner (which had about 500 people in Piazza Tolomei) towards the end of the dinner a piece of concrete broke of a balcony on a building above and landed on a 77 year old man from France and he passed away, so the town was in shock from this event, the following day I heard accounts from people at that dinner and it was freak accident that could never have been imagined. Also on the 16th one of the flag bearers from Civetta was injured when he threw the flag in the air and when it landed it hit him in the head, so Civetta wasn't having the best of luck for this Palio, and added to that, they came second in the horse race which is the worse position to be because you are so close but get nothing for second, it's actually better to be last than 2nd. Anyway, my professor told me when there are 4 contrada's in the Palio that have green in their flag it's not meant to be a good Palio, and this year there was that case.

But in the actual race, the contrada that won was Tartuca, and it was an experience I'll never forget, and I recommend people if they want to see it, try and get here and see the lead up to the event for at least the previous 4 days, you won't regret it.

Here are some photos