Religion

Only when you come to Siena and stay here for a while do you discover a new religion, which is known as Il Paglio. Surprisingly, all it is is just a horse race, but it's one of the most famous horse races in the world, but to the people that live here, it's more than that, it's a way of life. If you do a quick search on the internet, you can easily find the history of this event so I'm not going to repeat it, but what isn't written anywhere is the emotion associated with it, people from rivaling contrada's (each contrada covers a particular area of the town and each contrada has one horse which represents it) can discuss the event for hours if they have nowhere else to go, the festival's that each contrada has covers nearly the entire calender year, so there is always something happening, and I was fortunate enough to have a friend of a friend who is a part of one of the contrada's that had their annual festival the first week I was here in Siena, so I was fortunate enough to be invited as a guest to these events, because they aren't open to the public, for example, on the final night of the festival they do a massive outdoor feast in the main piazza of the contrada are there is between 300 to 400 people, and only people from the contrada can buy tickets, so it's not a case of what you know but who you know. After experiencing the hype of this event, I can't wait to see the actual event, which starts on the 13th August with the actual race on the 16th