The History of the Palio: Seven Centuries of a Race That Was Never for Us

---

The Palio has no founding date. Even the Comune di Siena, which organises it, writes only that the first Campo race "alla tonda" appears to date to 1633. What Siena has instead is rarer: documented continuity from the medieval Republic to next race day — and a race the city has always run for itself, whoever came to watch.

For the race as it stands today — the dates, the watching, the contrade — the Palio guide is the parent page.

Older than its own records

The Comune's official history opens with an admission — manca una data certa: no certain date exists for the Palio's origins, nor for the city's. In the founding myth they are the same event: Senio and Aschio, Remus's sons, racing what legend already calls a palio as they reached the site of Siena. By 1305 Dante could use the race as a figure everyone knew: "Molti corrono il Palio, ma uno è quello che 'l prende."

What the documents establish: in the Republic's golden age — the 150 years from the early 1200s to the mid-1300s — the Palio solemnly concluded the city's mid-August feast of the Assumption. By the early 1300s these were palii alla lunga, run through the streets from a city gate to the old cathedral, sometimes with riderless horses, the winner taking a pallium, the precious cloth that would give the whole Festa its name.

From the streets to the shell of the Campo

Through the Renaissance the city's games multiplied — bull hunts, even buffalo races — and slowly migrated from the streets into the Campo. The contrade emerge into the record in the same period, some under their current names by the late fifteenth century — though why each chose its totemic animal is, the Comune admits, unknown.

The decisive turn came in the seventeenth century. The proposal to run the Palio in the Piazza itself reached the Comune officially on 11 July 1605; the first race alla tonda — around the Campo, rather than across the city — "appears to date", as the Comune puts it, to 1633. By 1656 the race had its structurally definitive form, a regular rhythm, and its dedication to the Madonna di Provenzano, whose church still receives the July banner. From 1657 the fantini rode alla bisdossa — bareback, as they still do. Around 1666 came the tratta — from trahere, to draw by lot: horses assigned to contrade by chance rather than choice. And from 1685 a contrada drawn a poor horse was obliged to run anyway. Participation had become what it remains: a civic duty, not an entry.

The century that wrote the rulebook

The eighteenth century gave the Palio its second race — the Assunta's August carriera joining Provenzano's July one — and its law. On 16 May 1721 the governing Balìa issued the bando the Comune calls the foundation of the modern regulation; in 1729 the Governor Violante di Baviera fixed the contrade's boundaries by decree; in 1774 the Comune formally homologated the two Palii. Those boundaries have never moved: today's seventeen contrade, the Comune states plainly, "have remained unchanged since 1729".

The rulebook has bent only to catastrophe, and briefly. July 1799: suspended amid grave public disorder — and run again that August, once it was understood that banning the Palio was more dangerous than running it. July 1848: not run, the race funds sent to Sienese volunteers fighting in Lombardy. And in August 1943, in a prison camp in Tunisia, ten Sienese ran their Palio anyway — on a Campo traced in sand, with pasteboard plumes. Bruco won.

What the Palio is — and what it is not

The Comune's definition corrects most of what is written elsewhere: "Il Palio è una complessa manifestazione organizzata dal Comune di Siena" — a complex civic undertaking of the city itself. It is not a re-enactment, and it was never revived: the line from the Republic's August feast to next race day is continuous. The corteo that precedes the race — more than six hundred figures representing all seventeen contrade and the institutions of the old Republic — is the city presenting its own constitutional memory, not costumed entertainment. The prize is a painted silk banner, the drappellone, and nothing else. And watching from inside the Campo is free — the Palio has no gate.

Nor is it a museum piece. The rite absorbs innovation on one condition — that, in the Comune's phrase, "the innovation speaks the language of tradition". The monture took their definitive medieval-Renaissance form in 1904; the flag-throwers' sbandierata entered the rite in 1919, for the Great War's veterans, and never left. In 1935 an ordinance reserved the very name "Palio" exclusively to Siena's.

The contrade, the protagonists

The race's history is really the contrade's. Each is a piccola Patria — a small autonomous homeland, in the Comune's words, accompanying its people from birth to death, with membership by birthplace, blood or choice. Barely a tenth of contradaioli still live inside their rione; the belonging, closer to nationality than neighbourhood, has not loosened. Their shared institutions mark the modern dates: the Magistrato delle Contrade from 1894, the Comitato Amici del Palio from 1947, and since 1981 the Consorzio per la Tutela del Palio, guarding the Festa's image without speculative purpose.

Continuity, and the modern race

The rite today is the seventeenth century's, still legible line by line. Ten of the seventeen run, the horses assigned by lot — a sorte, the Comune's own words — after the tratta's trials; the fantino is hired only after the horse is known; the horse that finishes first wins with or without its rider, a principle the Comune dates to the first races in the Campo. Older threads persist: since the tratta of August 1837 only mares and geldings run, a custom the Comune notes has lasted to the present; the 1852 regulation already forbade giving the horses spirits.

What the modern era has added is care. Since 1991 a Pensionario near Radicondoli has taken in Palio horses retired by injury or age; since 1999 the Comune has enforced its doping ban with blood analysis, rebuilt the San Martino bend with a high-absorption barrier, and kept an annually renewed register of horses trained specifically for the Campo, under a yearly Protocollo Equino. At the Comune's last published count (June 2013) the documentary record held 385 palii run in the Campo by today's contrade. The count has grown on 2 July and 16 August almost every year since — joined by an extraordinary Palio in 2018, and paused only in 2020 and 2021, when, as the Comune's own archive records, the pandemic stopped the race.

Practical information

The race runs twice each year: 2 July (Palio di Provenzano) and 16 August (Palio dell'Assunta), each preceded by four days of trials and ritual — the machinery. The history, on open display: the Comune publishes its century-by-century history at palio.comune.siena.it; past drappelloni hang in the contrade's museums, visited by arrangement.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did the Palio di Siena start? There is no certain founding date — the Comune's own history says so. Street races crowned the city's August feast of the Assumption in the Republic's golden age; the first race around the Campo "appears to date", per the Comune, to 1633, taking definitive form and regular rhythm in 1656.

Is the Palio a historical re-enactment? No. It is a civic rite organised by the Comune di Siena and run by the city's seventeen living contrade in an unbroken tradition — interrupted only by war and, in 2020–21, the pandemic, and never revived, because it never died out. Its corteo represents the old Republic's institutions; the race is run for the city, not its guests.

How old are the contrade? The Comune traces the current contrade in documents from 1400, some already under their present names by the late fifteenth century; their number and boundaries, fixed by decree in 1729, are unchanged since.

Sources

Every factual claim on this page is drawn from the Comune di Siena's own Palio history, fetched and read in full on 14 August 2026. Where the Comune hedges — as it does on 1633 — we hedge with it.

• Origini del Palio · La Storia
• Il Rinascimento · Il Seicento · Il Settecento
• L'Ottocento · Il primo Novecento · Tra le due guerre
• Il secondo dopoguerra · Tempi moderni
• Le 17 contrade · Siena e il Palio · Tutela del cavallo
• Palii recenti — the archive that records the 2020 and 2021 Palii as not run, and the 2018 straordinario

One source we could not reach: ilpalio.org, the long-standing independent archive, refused our requests throughout. No claim on this page rests on it.

By the Siena & Toscana editors