All is magic in Siena, during the days of its glorious Palio! The Palio of Siena is a unique life experience. The magic of a tradition hundreds of years old in which the residents live for this moment, having conserved the same rites and atmosphere since the middle ages.

The Palio is run to celebrate the miraculous apparition of the Virgin Mary near the old houses that belonged to Provenzano Salvani in the mid 1600's. The holy apparition was dubbed "Madonna di Provenzano" and the very first Palio was run in her honour in 1656, on August 16th.
The Palio is a secular historical tradition strictly connected with the origin of the Contrade of Siena (districts into which the town is divided). The Contrade are competitive in a spectacular way.

Each has a seat, an oratory, a coat of arms, appellations, titles of nobility, emblems and colours, official representatives, festivities, patron Saints, protectors, their own delimited territories and their own population which consists of all those people who were born or live within the topographic limits of the district, according to the proclamation issued by Violante Beatrice of Bavaria on January 7th, 1730, at that time Governess of the town.

Palio in Siena