The Palio is not a tourist event: it is the life of the Sienese people over time and in its different aspects and feelings. It has remote origins, with some regulations still valid since 1633, the year in which it is documented with certainty that the first Palio with horses was run
The territory of the City is divided into seventeen Contradas with borders established in 1729 by the Notice of Violante of Bavaria, Governor of the City.
The Palio is the Palio. No sociological, historical, anthropological interpretation could explain it. Sublimation and damnation together with the fate of every single Sienese and his citizenship. Burning pyre of senesity, in any case unparalleled confirmation of it.
Mario Luzi, poet, 1998
