73. Siena

The next day we took a bus to Siena, about an hour south of Florence and its main rival for dominance in Tuscany. (Actually I'm shocked we took a bus, as I'm really not a bus person, but that's what my journal says, so I'm sticking with it.) Southern Tuscany is much more rural than the North, and quite hilly. It was very foggy as we approached the city, but the fog burned off by mid-morning.







We made a beeline for the Campo, the beautiful piazza at the center of the city. The city straddles three separate hilly ridges, and each ridge is a distinct neighborhood with centuries-old rivalries among them. The three ridges come together physically at the Campo. The neighborly rivalries are also played out here each year, in the famous Palio horse race. The jockeys, dressed in medieval riding gear, push their horses furiously around the sharp corners of the Palio, and typically only a third make it all the way around, the rest collapsing around the sharp corners. The winner is treated like a hero by his neighborhood, while the losers are abused with swears and rotten vegetables for the whole year. Unfortunately, the city has discontinued the other neighborhood rivalry event, the gioca del pugno. In this festival, each neighborhood put up a team of 300 men, and the three teams then met in the Campo and had a huge no holds barred fistfight until only one team was left standing.


Even without horses thundering about the place, the Campo is a very lively town center. It's set up like a giant scallop shell, lined with the palaces of the old families and now housing cafes at ground level. There are nine segments dividing up the shell, each representing one of the families who governed Siena via its Council of Nine. These segments slope gently down and converge on the Palazzo Pubblico, or city hall. We had breakfast at one of the tourist cafes and watched the city waking up. It's a good idea to get here early, as the Campo fills up with tour groups by late morning.