July 2007
/ 1 of 1
Esther Freud finds herself in Tuscany's most famous medieval walled city in July, when Palio fever is running high
Usually I hate research. What I enjoy is dreaming up stories in my study, but for the sake of my novel Love Falls it seemed I would have to take a trip to Italy, to Siena in the heart of Tuscany. It is March when I fly out from drizzly London, arriving a few hours and a train ride later in Siena, where the sun is shining and people sit outside drinking coffee and tall glasses of beer. This isn't too bad after all. Later I am standing in the Duomo, the city's famous black and white cathedral. It is even more beautiful inside than out - the black and white stripes continuing, rising up into a blue ceiling with gold stars.
Siena is a medieval walled city, its streets too narrow for any but the most determined cars. The shops are laid out like small museums, delicatessen windows arranged with twirls and bows of coloured pasta, a chemist hung with chandeliers. But however beautiful the city is, it's the main square - the Piazza del Campo - that is its star. All roads seem to lead to it and as you come upon it for the first time it's impossible not to gasp. It is circular and hemmed in by ancient buildings, and if it weren't for the cafés at the top, with their tables and sun shades, you'd think you had travelled back to the 16th century.
It is here in the Piazza del Campo that the famous Palio di Siena horse race is run each summer, once in July and again in August when ten jockeys race bareback round the square three times. The race only lasts 90 seconds, but the winner brings glory and honour to the district of the city that it represents. Siena is divided into 17 districts - Contrade - and although these areas and their people mingle happily all year, in the days before the Palio, fevers run so high that it is not uncommon for a wife or a husband, married into another Contrada, to go back to their own families for the night. Everywhere in Siena there are reminders of the Palio. Flags, photographs and trinkets, pictures of the 17 emblems of each Contrada - the Porcupine, the Shell, the Giraffe, the Tower. If I'm to set a book in Siena over the summer months, it will be impossible not to include the Palio.
The following August I am back. I can hardly believe my luck when I'm invited by Italian friends of friends to attend the race as their guest. I arrive a day early and attend the Prova - the dress rehearsal. Before taking our seats we squeeze into a side street to watch the parade. First we hear the singing. It is loud and stirring, a war song and a love song combined, and then the first horse is upon us. It is the horse of the Contrada of the Unicorn, followed by its supporters, men, then women, then children, all singing at the tops of their voices. Horse after horse is rushed through the streets, the Forest, the Panther, the Snail, disappearing eventually into the huge courtyard of the museum at the bottom of the Piazza where they wait for the bells to stop tolling and the race to begin. The Piazza has been transformed. Earth has been brought in from the countryside to make a track. Barricades are in place, and for the lucky ones, numbered seats have been set up in tiers. In the middle of the square, up to 60,000 people have been waiting since that morning to secure their place. And this is just the rehearsal.
The following day we arrive early. There is a pageant, with men from each Contrada dressed in medieval costume, waving, spinning, leaping, throwing huge flags in a flag-throwing dance. There are trumpeters and drummers and a cart pulled by white oxen on which the prize, the actual Palio itself (a painted canopy) is pulled. The tension is palpable. Today, Torre (Tower), a Contrada that hasn't won for 44 years, is the favourite. Torre has been allocated a good horse and a jockey from Sardinia who has won Palios before. But the race can't start until the horses are all lined up and facing the right way, and this, tantalisingly, can take hours. The tension builds still higher. "The horses are drugged to make them more wild," someone hisses. "The jockeys are collecting bets," says another. A woman faints in the middle of the square.
The horses twist and turn. "Once we waited so long the horses had to be taken away and reshod," my host tells me, but then finally, just as it is growing dark, the cannon goes off and the horses streak ahead, the jockeys clinging on with nothing but their reins, their whips raised, not just for their horses, but for each other. And Torre is in the lead. "It's a fix," someone says, but I'm standing up now, shouting, screaming with all the other Torre supporters, for Torre to win. A riderless horse is gaining on him - a riderless horse can win - but we all shout "Torre!" with such anguish that surely he can't lose now and he's done two laps. Just one more to go, and he's done it. Torre has won.
Members of its Contrada leap down from the stands, rip off their shirts, fall to their knees, kiss and weep and raise their arms to the Madonna. We run with them to the cathedral and swarm inside where a great swell of singing only gets louder when the victorious jockey is carried in. Later, we celebrate with a dinner at the Café del Campo, while the citizens of Siena promenade round the Piazza, in their fiesta best. Now that's the kind of research I like. It beats a day at a library any time.
Esther Freud's latest novel, Love Falls (Bloomsbury, £12.99), is out now
