Selva comes out on top

The horse representing the Selva contrade won the Palio. Below is the winning horse, Fedora Saura, and the winning jockey (in the black shirt in the second picture) being celebrated by members of the contrade.

Below is the view from our seats of the track, the center of the Campo and the town hall. One can view the Palio for free from the center. It's standing room only with about 50,000 of your closest Italian friends. Seats around the outside are hard to come by. We were very lucky to be able to watch from reserved seats with many of our friends from Novartis.

The running of the Palio is preceded by a 3-hour long parade that is complete with hundreds of Sienese dressed in traditional costumes, flag throwers, as well as various animals. Three hours of parading seemed a little overwhelming at first, but when we were there we realized that it is all about the build up to the race. The tension in the Campo builds up over the three hours, as do the numbers in the crowd. Representatives from each contrade along with their jockey and horse march by, representatives from the absorbed, or dead, contrade march by, representatives from the current police force (pictured below) march by and the parade is periodically stopped so that the flag throwers can demonstrate their skills to the audience.

For us, the parade and race were entertaining. I think only the Sienese can understand the real importance of the event, but it was a once in a lifetime experience for us and I'm grateful we were able to attend.

Below is a video from You Tube that does a good job of capturing the spirit of the event. (Sorry about the music...would not have been my choice.)

Below is the video of the actual race that we attended.