On the Fall Equinox in the year 1462, Pope Pius II dedicated the town of Pienza.
Now, 5 centuries later, the town of Pienza recreates the event, with a weekend dedicated to Renaissance pageantry and competitions.
Ten years ago, when we first went to this event, we posted a photo of “Two Maidens”…pretty young Pientini in costume. This year, their daughters continued the tradition.
The local nobility was well represented.
The college of Cardinals sent a delegation.
Some of the people who dressed the part look as if they belong in the Rennaissance.
The event drew a crowd 10 deep circling the entire piazza.
Every available window on Piazza Pio was filled with onlookers.
They weren’t there for the food…or to gawk at the costumes.
The crowd was there for the Sbandieratori, the flag throwers.
It was billed as a friendly competition. Sbandieratori from four different towns each got a chance to show off their acts. (For a description of the evolution of the sbandieratori, see our 2017 blog post https://rbergson.org/sbandieratori-flag-wavers/)
The first entrant was from Umbria, the town of Giove. (In the case of all the videos that follow, it’s best watched in full screen mode)
The second team was from the town of Torrita di Siena…about 25 kilometers up the road:
The third team came from San Quirico, just on the other side of the Val d’ Orcia. The town is notable for its success in flag throwing competitions. This video should demonstrate why:
Finally, the home team got the final at bat:
If you think this is just some simple flag waving, the following video clip…in slow motion…shows what virtuosos these athletes are:
Earlier this Summer, we reported to you on Siena’s world-famous Palio.
So, we would be remiss if we didn’t follow up with a blog post about Pienza’s own version of the event.
It started Saturday night with a Contrada (neighborhood) dinner. Each neighborhood had a set of tables in the main piazza. All six neighborhoods combined for about one eighth the number of diners at the Oca dinner we attended in Siena (see https://rbergson.org/dinner-at-the-palio/)
Sunday’s activities began in a jam-packed Piazza Pio with a performance by the sbandieratori, or flag throwers.
(The short video below is best viewed in full-screen mode)
Then came the main event: Cacio a Fuso…or the Rolling of the Cheese.
The idea is to roll a wheel of Pienza’s famous sheep-milk cheese (cacio) as close to the pin (fuso) as possible.
It’s not as easy as you’d think.
It’s heart-pounding, non-stop action, every bit as exciting as a bareback horse race. (Again, we suggest watching the video below in full-screen mode.)
Of the 96 rolls in the competition, this was the only one to hit the fuso.
Carol and Roger left Pienza for the Summer to spend time with family and friends in Seattle. During our absence, there was a thunderstorm. A lightning strike hit the power line feeding our street. The power surge fried computers, television sets, and any other appliance left on during the storm.
Unbeknownst to us, one of the casualties of this lightning strike was our WiFi router. The utility company promptly sent out a crew to restore service to everybody who reported an outage. Since we were in Seattle and unaware of the storm, we never reported a problem and so did not get our service repaired.
We returned to Pienza to find our phone line dead and our WiFi router fried. We called TIM (our provider of cell and internet service at the time). They promised to send out a repair team. After several more phone calls and a 6 week wait, we had an Italian friend make a more insistent call. Despite repeated promises, the TIM repair crew never showed up.
2020:
The year of the COVID pandemic. We hunkered down in Seattle and never made it to Pienza.
2021:
We gave up on TIM and tried another provider. It worked…but the “travel router” they provided was painfully slow, dropped data connections during high demand, and was generally unsatisfactory.
2023:
Then we heard about Open Fiber, the company bringing fiber optic internet service to all of Italy.
The company is a hardware wholesaler, providing infrastructure for 32 different service providers. We got to take our pick.
Our next door neighbors had just contracted with Vodafone for high speed internet service. The fiber optic cable entered their house 25 meters from ours. How hard could it be to extend the service one more house? We chose Vodafone to be our service provider.
The company was happy to sign us to a new contract. They sent service techs out within a few days. They puttered around inside our apartment…
Every connection they checked had been smoked by the power surge. They replaced all the boards and outlets inside the house. Still, no service.
By the process of elimination they narrowed the source of the problem down to the junction box attached to the back of another neighbor’s house right behind us.
The techs went around the block, buzzed the doorbell at that neighbor’s gate, and asked for permission to replace the circuit board inside the box. Our neighbor exploded in curses (even though Roger’s Italian is limited, he had no problem getting the drift of this tirade). The neighbor said he would call the Carabinieri (national police) if the techs so much as set foot on his property.
The techs called Vodafone…who told them to give up and move on to their next assignment. It mattered not that another working internet feed was just a few meters away.
2025:
Out of pure frustration using our cell phones as internet hot spots, Roger gave Fiber One another try. If there were 32 available vendors, perhaps he could find one that would be willing to extend the fiber optic cable to our house from next door.
This time, he chose Enel, the utility already providing our electrical service.
As luck would have it, Fiber One sent the same technician out who was the subject of our neighbor’s tirade two years before. We explained we wanted to extend the cable from next door.
The call to Enel produced better results. If we would dig a trench and bury conduit, Enel would allow Fiber One to extend the cable into our yard.
It turns out, our back yard was in the middle of a complete remodel (note the new walkway that had just been set down). Maurizio, our neighbor and the stone mason who was doing the remodel, said he would dig the trench and lay the conduit. Of course, it turned out more complicated than we thought.
After digging the trench and laying the conduit, Maurizio had to cut out the steps he had just installed (see black arrow above), burrow under the steps, then burrow under the newly-laid walkway.
But in the end, we got a trough that…despite several unexpected turns… contained the cable that the technicians could bring into our apartment.
After only 6 years, we finally have functioning WiFi.
Now, all we have to do is remember to unplug the router when leave Pienza for any length of time. We never want to go through this adventure again.
For those of you who inquired about how our horse did in the bareback race the day after the dinner…and there were a few…
The Oca contrada’s horse…Godmade.
The race did not come off as planned. For the first time in 155 years, a sudden rainstorm forced postponement of the event. See what it takes to postpone the Palio: Palio Rained out
The race was rescheduled for the next day, July 3rd.
We don’t want to give away what happened, so watch the attached video (which runs 2 minutes). Note this is a bareback horse race, no saddle, no stirrups for the jockeys. Invariably, not all the riders stay on their horses. If you watch carefully, you’ll see some horses finish on their own. Link: The Race Itself.
Yes, the Oca horse Godmade won this year’s race.
As the Italians say, “Vinci, Vinci, Vinci!”
For those of you who want to see the full pageantry, the attached link (which runs 2 hours and 42 minutes) shows it all…without having to stand in a crowd of 40,000 for hours on end: Palio Pagentry.
The city of Siena is world-famous for its bareback horse race, the Palio.
The race draws 40-thousand spectators, all packed into the Campo… Siena’s main piazza.
It’s been the setting for many a movie, including…a few years ago… the James Bond Film Quantum of Solace. A link to that movie scene is here: Quantun of Solace, Palio Scene.
Siena’s Palio is, however, much more than a setting for a horse race. It’s mostly an opportunity for the city’s neighborhoods …contradas…to build a sense of community and show their spirit..
The night before the horse race, each contrada hosts a neighborhood dinner. This one, in the Lumaca (Snail) contrada, was set up to feed one thousand people.
We were impressed.
Four hours before the dinners were scheduled to begin, flag and drum corps marched through the city, literally drumming up business.
The contrada we were visiting was the Oca..Goose …neighborhood.
The contrada got its name centuries ago, when intruders tried to sneak into the neighborhood, and the geese raised such a racket they woke up the residents who then sprang to their common defense.
The theme is built into every neighborhood institution. This mosaic is in the floor of the church of Santa Caterina, the patron saint of Siena
The church contains a museum of Palio victories.
This one the 1874 horse race.
…and the jockey’s silks from the 2013 win.
Not to be outdone, the Oca flag and drum corps paraded through town…
…followed by the horse who would race the next day…
…and a gaggle of pre-teens, all decked out in contrada flags and singing the neighborhood anthem.
At 9:30 pm, dinner finally began. Forty tables, all the size of this one.
160 neighboor teens served the meal and cleaned up afterwards.
How much pasta does it take to feed this many people?
In case you were wondering, this is what a dinner with 1600 guests looks like.
As the dignitaries entered, the crowd broke out in the contrada’s anthem, waving napkins as they sang.
At the head table, the contrada’s capitano and race jockey were feted to a standing ovation.
And while the inevitable speeches droned on, we made new friends…in this case a couple from Britain.
A five course meal with three different wines. We were punched out.
At about 1:00am, the festivities started to wind down. We made it back to Pienza at 3:00am, wondering how anybody from the contrada could make it to the horse race the next day.
At least, some of the participants didn’t take the festivities too seriously.
But note, the language on the tee shirt is not in Italian.
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