Welcome to the most interesting, quirky Italian hilltown you can possibly imagine. Siena is a hoot.
Let's start with a lil' background, with help from the wonderful world of Google Image search: Siena is the home to the insane, twice yearly Palio: a 3-lap horse race around the town's famous shell-shaped campo.
The winning jockey wins a painted silk banner called a palio which is given to the winning contrada. Each horse represents one of the 17 contradas, or neighborhoods, within the city, most of which are named after an animal. These contradas are EVERYTHING to the people of Siena...you are defined by your contrada and you're infinitely dedicated to your contrada. How much so?
You are baptized twice in Siena: once as a Christian, then again as a contrada member in the neighborhood fountain.
Each contrada has its own private museum to show off its palio banners and memorabilia.
Births are announced on the neighborhood bulletin boards by stating "a new goose/bear/eagle/worm/dragon/etc is born!"
The corner of two meeting contradas is always marked with the flags/colors of the 2 contrada and when the Palio is being run, the city is covered in flags.
Before the Palio is run, the horse is taken to the contrada church and blessed.
Everywhere you turn there are custom trashcans/flags/wall tiles/banners/custom light fixtures/etc to remind you of whose contrada you're in...We were fortunate enough to have a chance to see the "behind the scenes" of the Goose District with a visit to the contrada museum and church--a rare opportunity for someone who's not a contrada member. Our walk to the Goose District Museum gave us a preview of the contrada dedication...here are only a few of the contrada knickknacks that were stuck in the walls of the houses along the street...
Inside the museum we saw the Palio of the winning-est Goose District...from the 19th century traditional ones...
to the modern ones, now sometimes commissioned by the city from international artists...
These silly jockey/horse figurines illustrate the competitive contrada pride...while everyone is seriously watching for the start of the race, the dumb Tower district rider (the Tower district being the hated enemy of the Goose district) stares off in the wrong direction...this idiot is second from the right...
And of course, the Goose District museum had every sort of Goose memorabilia you could possibly imagine...
Siena's other identity is as the home of many famous saints and popes. In fact, the Goose District Museum and Church was the childhood home of St. Catherine of Siena, whose relics (her visible head!) are preserved here--along with the contrada banners, of course--in St. Dominic.
Siena also boasts a GIANT Gothic cathedral, which seems to dwarf the much more-charming Orvieto cathedral (I may be slightly biased...). The Duomo in Siena as it is today was actually only supposed to be a side transept of the originally planned Duomo, which was going to be the biggest church in the world...until the plague hit Siena and plans changed.
Much more ornate than the Orvieto Duomo, complete with mishmashy stripes of varying widths and a painted dome...Orvieto seems to prove that less is more! (again, perhaps some bias.)
We'll leave Siena with one of my favorite silly memories of this equally silly city. At the back of the famous piazza, the Campo, stands a white marble fountain. The aerobatic pigeons in Siena like to hang out here and are entertainingly skilled at climbing down the stone wolves and dangling there for a quick drink...
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