Attractions

Siena's Cumulative Tickets

Siena has several reduced-price cumulative ticket combos you can pick up at any of the participating museums or sites. One, valid for 2 days, covers civic museums -- Museo Civico, Santa Maria della Scala, and the contemporary art gallery in the Palazzo delle Papesse on Via di Città (where admission is 5€/$6.50) -- for 11€ ($14) total. Alternatively, a 7-day ticket for these sites, plus the Baptistery, costs 14€ ($18).

There is also a combined ticket valid for 3 days that gives you access to Museo Dell' Opera Metropolitana, Baptistery, Crypt and Museo Diocesano for 10€ ($13).

Additionally, some attractions sell their own cumulative tickets, as the one for admission to both the Museo Civico and Torre del Mangia -- a savings of 1.50€ ($1.95) over separate admission tickets.

Il Campo: The Heart of Siena

Via Banchi di Sopra, Via Banchi di Sotto, and Via di Città all meet at the Loggia della Mercanzia, begun from Sano di Matteo's plans in 1417. Here Siena's merchants argued cases before a commercial tribunal so impartial that foreign governments came to have them settle financial differences.

From here, several tunnel-like stepped alleys lead down into Piazza del Campo (Il Campo), arguably the most beautiful piazza in all of Italy. Crafted like a sloping scallop shell, the Campo was first laid out in the 1100s on the site of the Roman forum. The herringbone Siena brick pavement is divided by white marble lines into nine sections representing the city's medieval ruling body, the Council of Nine. The Campo's tilt, fan shape, and structure are all a calibrated part of the city's ancient water system and underground canal network. At the top of the Campo is a poor 19th-century replica of Jacopo della Quercia's 14th-century masterpiece fountain, the Fonte Gaia. Some of the very badly eroded original panels are kept in the Palazzo Pubblico .

The only surviving medieval buildings on the square are, at the top, the curving facade of the battlemented 13th-century Palazzo Sansedoni and at the fan's base, the city's focal point, the Palazzo Pubblico (1297-1310). This crenellated town hall is the city's finest Gothic palace, and the Museo Civico inside is home to Siena's best artwork . When the Black Death finally abated in 1348, the city built a loggia chapel, the Cappella della Piazza, at the left end of the palazzo's base to give thanks that at least parts of the city had been spared. Rising above it is the slender 100m (328-ft.) tall brick Torre del Mangia (1338-48), crowned with a Lippo Memmi-designed cresting in white travertine. It was the second-tallest tower in medieval Italy and was named after a slothful bell ringer nicknamed Mangiaguadagni, or "profit eater." (There's an armless statue of him in the courtyard.)

If you fancy climbing 503 steps and aren't particularly claustrophobic, the tower is a great place to check out the unforgettable view across Siena's cityscape and the rolling green countryside beyond. Admission is 5€ ($6.50) with a reservation and 5.50€ ($7.15) without. You can reserve a time to climb the tower by calling tel. 0577-41-169 or faxing 0577-226-265. The tower (entrance in the courtyard) is open from November 1 to March 15 from 10am to 4pm and from March 16 to October 31 from 10am to 7pm.

The Palio Delle Contrade

No other festival in Italy is as colorful, as intense, or as spectacular as Siena's Palio. Twice a year, Siena packs the Piazza del Campo with dirt and runs a no-holds-barred bareback horse race around it, the highlight of a full week of trial runs, feasts, parades, spectacles of skill, and solemn ceremonies. The tradition, in one form or another, goes back to at least 1310.

The Palio is a deadly serious competition, and while Siena doesn't mind if visitors show up (you may, in fact, find yourself adopted into the contrada of the first person you make friends with and invited to the communal feasts), but in the end visitors are peripheral. The Palio is for the Sienese.

To understand the Palio -- really, to understand Siena -- you must know something of the contrada system. In the 14th century there were about 42 contrade, neighborhood wards that helped provide militia support for Siena's defense. The number of wards was successively reduced until the current 17 contrade were fixed in 1675. Each ward is named after an animal or object -- Drago (Dragon), Giraffa (Giraffe), Istrice (Porcupine), Onda (Wave), Torre (Tower) -- and each has its own headquarters, social club, museum, and church.

Each contrada has always been responsible for its own. You are born into the contrada of your parents, are baptized in your contrada's open-air font, learn your contrada's allies and enemies at an early age, go to church in your contrada's oratory, almost invariably marry within your contrada, spend your free time hanging out in the contrada social club, and help elect or serve on your contrada's governing body. Even your funeral is sponsored by the contrada, which mourns your passing as family. In a way, it's like a benevolent form of Hollywood's mythical Mafia -- but no contrada tolerates unlawfulness, and as a result Siena has a shockingly low crime rate.

Ten contrade are chosen by lot each year to ride in the July 2 Palio (established in 1659). The other seven, plus three of the July riders, run the even bigger Palio on August 16 (which dates from 1310). Although both races are technically equal in importance, the August Palio gets the most attention, partly because it's older but mainly because it's a sort of rematch, the last chance to win for the year. Actually, chance really is what wins the Palio: Your opportunity to ride, the horse you're given, and the order you're lined up on the track are each chosen by separate lots; even your jockey is a wild card. He's always imported -- traditionally a Maremma horseman, but many come these days from Sardegna and Sicily as well -- and you'll never know how well he'll ride, whether the bribe one of your rival contrade may slip him will outweigh the wages you paid, or if he'll even make it to the race without being ambushed. If your jockey does turn on you, you'd better hope he's thrown quickly. The Palio, you see, is a true horse race -- the horse is the one that wins (it's hoped no rivals have drugged it), whether there's a rider still on it or not. The jockey's main job is to hang onto the horse's bare back and thrash the other horses and their riders with the stiff ox-hide whip he's given for the purpose. The Palio may at this point seem pretty lawless, but there actually is one rule: No jockey can grab another horse's reins.

At the two 90-degree turns of the Campo, almost every year a rider or two -- and occasionally an entire horse -- goes flying out of the racetrack to land among the stands or slams up against the mattresses prudently padding the palazzi walls. Sienese lore, however, maintains that no one has ever died in the running of a Palio. What is the prize for all this? A palio, a banner painted with the image of the Virgin Mary, in whose name the race is run. That, and the honor of your contrada. The Sienese refer to the palio banner offhandedly as il cencio (the rag), trying their best to sound flippant about the single greatest object of their collective desires and aspirations.

The Palios really start on June 29 and August 13, when the lots are drawn to select the 10 lucky racers and the trial races begin. Over the next 2 days, morning and afternoon trial runs are held, and on the evening before each Palio, the contrade hold an all-night feast and party lasting more or less until the 7:45am Jockey's Mass in the Cappella della Piazza on the Campo. There's a final heat at 9am, then everybody dissolves to his or her separate contrada for last-minute preparations. The highlight is the 3pm (3:30pm in July) Blessing of the Horse in each contrada's church -- a little manure dropping at the altar is a sign of good luck -- at which the priest ends with a resounding command to the horse: "Go forth, and return a winner!"

Unless invited by a contrada, you're probably not going to get into any of the packed churches for this, so your best strategy is to stick around the Campo all day. Because standing in the center of the Campo for the race is free (the grandstands require tickets), you should ideally stake out a spot close to the start-finish line before 2pm. Just before 5pm, the pageantry begins, with processions led by a contingent from Montalcino in honor of it harboring the last members of the Sienese Republic in the 16th century. The palio banner is drawn about the piazza in the War Chariot (a wagon drawn by two snowy white oxen), and contrada youths in Renaissance costume juggle huge, colorful banners in the sbandierata flag-throwing display.

At 7:30pm (7pm in July) the horses start lining up between two ropes. Much care is taken to get the first nine in some indeterminate perfect order. After countless false starts and equine finagling, suddenly the 10th horse comes thundering up from behind, and as soon as he hits the first rope the second one is dropped and the race is on. Three laps and fewer than 90 seconds later, it's over. The winning contrada bursts into songs celebrating its greatness, losers cry in each other's arms, and those who suspect their jockeys of double-crossing them chase the hapless men -- whose horses don't stop running at the finish line -- through the streets, howling for blood. The banquets that night, at long tables laid out on the streets of each contrada, are more solemn than the feasts of the night before, with only the winners truly living it up -- their party goes on for several days.

If standing in the middle of the hot and crowded Campo doesn't attract you -- and anyone with a small bladder might want to think twice, as there are no facilities and no one is allowed in or out from just before the procession until the race is over (about 3 1/2 hr.) -- you can try to buy a ticket for a seat in the grandstands or at a window of one of the buildings surrounding the piazza. These are controlled by the building owners and the shops in front of which the stands are set up and cost anywhere from 350€ $455 for a single seat to 1,220€ $1,586 for a window seating four people. They sell out sometimes up to 6 months before the race itself. Palio Viaggi, Piazza Gramsci 7 (tel. 0577-280-828), can help you score a few, and the tourist office has all the contacts for the individual shops and buildings if you want to negotiate directly for a seat. If you show up late and sans ticket, make your way up Via Giovanni Duprè to the Piazza del Mercato behind the Palazzo Pubblico; the police stationed there will often allow people into the Campo between the processions and the race itself.

In Terza di Camollia

Siena's northern third spreads off either side of the palace-lined Via Banchi di Sopra. Two blocks up on the left is the oldest Gothic palace in the city, the Palazzo Tolomei, begun in 1208 and now home to the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze bank. The piazza out front is where the city council met from the 11th century until the Palazzo Pubblico was built. Two blocks farther is the piazza formed by the Gothic Palazzo Salimbeni and its tributary palaces, linked to form the seat of the Monte di Paschi di Siena, Siena's powerhouse bank founded in 1472 and still a strong player in Italian finance (and the city's largest employer).