Enrico Toti (Standard-Bearer in the Piazza from 1962 to 1975)
In the Palio the Standard-Bearer has a privileged role. Indeed he translates strength, passion, identity, and the pride of belonging by means of the refined, silky arpeggio of his flag. (1998)

Pope John XXIII
Your flaming flags, your glorious and historical Palio, are symbols of perennial youth, of hearty discipline, of sincere patriotic love. (1959)

Alfredo "Ciappata" Donnini (Standard-Bearer in the Piazza from 1954 to 1962)
Being a Standard-Bearer is the most beautiful thing. You enter from the Casato with the colors of the Goose Contrada on your body and in your heart. You carry out one, two, three flag-waving routines with the terror of making a mistake" and with the confidence of being the best. Then all seventeen of you line up from San Martino's corner to the Casato for the last hurl. And there you give yet another great effort to throw the flag of the Paperone [the Goose] higher than all the rest, all the way to the turrets of the Palazzo, to touch the sky. And then you are happy. (Circa 1980)

Giancarlo Galardi (Standard Bearer in the Piazza from 1949-1958)
The flag" if I could I would have hurled it above the rooftops of Siena, so that everyone could see the purity of the colors that are the image of my contrada. (1998)

Renzo Cassigoli (journalist for L'Unità).
What a happy city is one that blesses not jockeys but horses. (1998)

Paola Fallaci (journalist for Oggi)
Having been to Siena to see whether or not they treat the animals cruelly, I decided to be reborn as a mare Yes, it's good to be reborn as mares. I say mares because the male horses are geldings, which is the only unpleasant trick that's played on them. (1986)

Umberto Eco (semiotician)
For which we honor the image of Hermes that adorns the floor of the Catherdral of this noble city. But against his seduction let us remember that, if one must run in the Palio, a horse is a horse is a horse. (1992)

Luca Luchini (journalist, essayist)
But those who speak ill of the Palio and of the Sienese, what do they know about how a horse might feel as it parades along the yellow earth in the Piazza before thousands of spectators, or about the joy that can be felt when the tears of Contrada members are mixed with one's own sweat?

Roberto Morrocchi (journalist)
The horse is the true protagonist of the Palio. A hero without flaw, loved, pampered, desired, cried over. Guardian of the Contrada member's dreams: the horse runs for him with all its strength and courage, braving the perils of a track that is at once magical and unyielding. The horse never sells out, never feels fear, makes no calculations. It never lets its hoof be held by all-too-human feelings. The horse alone may enter by right into myth, into legend. Side by side with the horse go the memories of triumph, the disappointments of a scorching defeat (1998)

Guido Piovene (essayist)
Attachment to the Contrada has got nothing to do with ideas, with political parties, with personal interests. It depends exclusively on the place of birth, on ancestry, on everything before birth; it is not thought, but passion agreed to by simple entry into the world. The man from Siena feels for his Contrada more deeply than for anything else that which was called “the demon of belonging.”

Judith Hook (historian)
The Palio is essential to the life of the Contrade. The Contrade in turn are essential to the life of Siena. The Palio, the Contrade, and Siena thus constitute a virtually interdependent trinity. (1979)

Daniele Magrini (journalist, essayist)In a world in which interpersonal relationships become ever more difficult, in a society in which myths and certainties fall down one by one, in Siena the Contrada remains. (1986)

Manuela Audisio (journalist for LaRepubblica)
a minute-and-a-half orgasm which lasts and has been prepared for a lifetime. Like feeling too hot under the covers. (1985)

Jean Pierre Clerc (journalist for Le Monde)
The horse race is an incredibly intense moment, experienced as such by the Sienese, none of whom would be elsewhere for all the gold in the world; a moment the intensity of which could not fail to excite even the coolest of foreigners, yet it lasts no longer than a flash of lightning (1987)

Duccio Balestracci Balestracci (historian)
Now the horses come out from the Great Entrance and they go to the starting rope: don't say anything, don't ask anything. It's the most terrible moment for anyone born here: respect it. They enter the starting area: watch and be quiet. They're off. Around you anything can happen. The Palio is this, too. Experience it, understand it, but don't try to be part of it yourself. You'd only manage to give life to parody: spare yourself and spare us. It's only a little more than a minute: now it's all finished. (1998)

Vincenzo Tessandori (journalist for La Stampa)
Three times around the Campo on an improvised track, wild cheering, the most intense minute and a half in the world lived by an agitated crowd. Man can only lose and the one who wins is the horse, for he can win even "scosso," riderless. And then, the horse is the Contrada. (1998)

Maria Pia Corbelli (journalist for La voce del Campo)
Women have an important role also in the Palio, the inimitable Palio, an uplifting rite which brings back to the present the history of the Republic of Siena. Watching the past and present episodes in which women have been active participants, we see women Captains, Priors, and Jockeys parade by on the screen. Among them all we note, for the indispensability of her participation, Violante of Bavaria. (1998)

Maria Grazia Testi Botteghi (Prior of the Porcupine Contrada from 1990 to 1992)
As in social life, women in recent years have achieved equal opportunity even within the environment of the Contrada, an emblemtically fixed institution on the one hand but on the other hand dynamic and not at all cut off from our time. The Contrada has known how to appreciate women's abilities and gifts so much so that women have been assigned ever more important and prestigious tasks.

Sonia Corsi (journalist for Il Nuovo Campo)
Women and the Palio: a relationship in continual evolution and, though holding fast to the traditional notion that the Palio is a masculine festival, women and the Palio have a relationship in continual evolution. Though tradition dictates that our festival is dedicated to a woman even if it is made up of men, as time passes, the world of women has not been denied its own important space. (1998)

Bino Sanminiatelli (writer)
The jockeys, armed with a riding crop of toughened bull tendons, are at the starting gate. They have the shirts and long trousers of convicts. From underneath their helmets appear sinister grins, coarse faces, all rips and patches. (1950)

Paolo Maccherini Maccherini (journalist for the RAI)
In the person of the jockey, active instrument of all passion and of all suffering, the Sienese unconsciously incarnate and recognize themselves, in the sometimes mortifying, other times uplifting, dimensions of the present that matters. (1998)

Giorgio Batini (journalist La Nazione)
Sectarianism and tolerance are starting up again.Sworn political adversaries hug each other in the Contrada, long-time non-believers donate gifts to the church, praying to the Madonna of Provenzano and to Mary of the Assumption, Patron of Siena. They would let themselves be torn to bits to win the Great Banner with the sacred image. (1966)

Enrico Campana (journalist for La Gazzetta dello Sport)
"Faithful to his script for a Pirandello-style race, in which reality is punctually superior to imagination." (1987)

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (writer)  
"The Palio is a diamond fist to hold up against any of Italy's enemies." (circa 1930)

Tommaso Landolfi (writer)
Here the city walls seem cut from some precious material; scorched and brilliant The fates hand themselves over to the Palio, and the Palio marks, for whoever is full of heart, an era of the soul. (1939)

Giovanni Cecchini (historian)
This mixture of official characters and popularism has given to the Palio its special imprint that has lasted over the centuries and throughout political upheavals, penetrating into the popular mindset so much so that it is impossible to think of Siena without thinking of the Palio, or of the Palio without thinking of Siena. (1958)

Mario Ismaele Castellano (Archbishop of Siena)                                             
Telling the Sienese not to take part in the Palio is like telling fish not to live in the sea. (1991)

Stefano Bisi (jouralist for Il Corriere di Siena)                       
The Palio is three minutes with your heart in your throat, four days of breathlessness, a lifetime of breathing in rich lungfuls. (1998)

Yoeri Albrecht (journalist for Vrij Nederland)                       
The Palio only lasts for 90 seconds, but they are the most exciting seconds that can be lived in all of Europe. The Palio is both allegory and reality. It has remained true to itself, adapting to time during the past centuries, which is why it has not become an artificial folk event. The race is the flower of the social organism of Siena's Contrade. A race in which almost everything is allowed, but the result is determined by Fortune. (1998

Mario Luzi (poet)                                             
The Palio is the Palio. No sociological, historical, or anthropological interpretation could ever explain it. Both the sumblimation and the damnation of fate in every single Sienese and in his citizenship. Burning stake of Siena-ness, in any case the incomparable proof of that trait. (1998)

Geraldo Righi Parenti (writer)                                             
The Palio is the grandiose, magnificent poem of this Siena, and it is the very soul of its people. (1926)

Franco Fortini (poet, essayist)                                             
In the Piazza there is something like an emphasis: but not in the order of the grandiose. It's hard to define. Something similar can be found perhaps in Venice, in certain unexpected expanses. It's a sort of warning. It is one of the aspects of Siena that could be called religious. (1989)

Carlo Nepi (architect)                                             
But the imagination goes beyond and transforms this space into a gigantic theater, the stage all around, with the audience in the center and along the sides those who attend their own festival, their own performance; and then the earth, hidden beneath the stone skin, re-emerges and unveils the "naturalness" of the place that becomes the theater of the animal struggle, of the race of horses and men. (1998)

Faiza Mahari
The Palio is not a simple horse race, but the rite of a city, the culminating moment of a civilazation and a symbol " so very significant " of a republican military glory. (1989)

Indro Montanelli (journalist, essayist)
The race is not the ultimate act of the Palio, even if it is the most spectacular. What makes up the most interesting human side is its preparation. But unfortunately one needs to be Sienese, or at least Tuscan, to fully understand the mixture of the emotional and the rational, the passionate and the calculated, the sacred and the profane that inspires the various propiatory rites. (1974)

Aldo Cairola (art historian)
The relationship between "sacred" and "profane" is present in the Contrada from its very origins, and it finds particular expression in all parts of the Palio. (1981)

Roberto Barzanti (historian)
"Like any organism that lives off human blood, the Palio lends itself to no guidebook oversimplifications. Like any festival rooted in intrigue with a long and ancient history, the Palio maintains its combative significance, in no way commonplace. It calls for intelligence without rhetoric, it fears the banality of anecdote, it shies away from slogans that might reduce it to yet another invention, to yet another of the many mundane feasts in fancy dress that fill up the boot [the Italian peninsula]." (1972)

Alberto Comucci (writer)
The Palio lifts and drags the people to delirium, fed by a storm of passions unleashed from their soul almost to the point, in certain moments, of churning its sense of reason, or, as they in Sienese, of making them "sciaborditi" ["discombobulated"]. (1926)

Mario Celli (journalist Il Campo di Siena)
The Palio, though to the non-Sienese it may be and appear a spectacle (a spectacle of the crowd whose love and passion sweats in the burning struggle of the ten protagonists), is to the Sienese and to the Contrada members a matter of suffering, of enthusiasm or of disappointment. The Palio is not to be seen, but is to be suffered, and there is no joy more immense than triumph and no cup more bitter than that of defeat. (1974)

Vasco Pratolini (writer)
"turning toward the track I saw a faraway red and black blur roll off and a horse with free bridle follow the panting cloud of other gallopers, suddenly made glad and light, freed, as it was, of its rider" (1939)

Aldous Huxley (essayist, writer)
No, the Palio is really a performance; without any particular significance, but by the simple fact of being traditional yet vital, it signifies infinitely more than English events which are stillborn, with all their Parker-style free verse and their dramatic implications. For these pages, these soldiers, these standard-bearers are straight out of the age of Pinturicchio. (1925)

Gianni Tiberi (journalist for La Nazione)
And then there's an instant in which sound stops. Waiting for the horses to come out through the Great Entrance, all those heads turned in unison toward the Palazzo Pubblico stand for its most intimate essence. The Palio as waiting, as hope. A glance toward the future, finding in the victories of the past the impetus and eagerness to win again. To understand the Palio, the race isn't necessary. (1998)

Margherita di Savoia (Queen of Italy to her Lady of Honor the Marchess of Villamarina)
"The Palio is a vision of a poem by Ariosto made real!Oh, Marchess, it is like waking up from a dream of having lived a day in another era." (1861)

Giovanni Guiso (writer)
In Siena, more than anywhere else, thanks to a subtle network of feelings, solitude is conquered more easily. It's not only a question of the city's size but of the quality of relationships that blossom in the genuine mixture of diverse social strata which, levelled by culture, live together in mutual respect, helped along by the everpresent spirit of Contrada membership. (1993)

Aldo Palazzeschi (writer)
Shouts, rebukes, threats" intrigues, betrayals" a few lashes that fly and fall, the slightly dented skin of a jockey, perhaps a couple of drops of blood but a smile on everything, I thought the following day, after a scene of color more beautiful than any I had ever seen, while the train ran along, taking me far away from those city walls that some miracle has preserved for our eyes, and where the most outspoken speakers of Italian play at discord with such grace. (1926)

Corrado Govoni (poet)
And run, oh poetry
the finish line is already in sight:
run even with only the plume
of my betrayed springtime! (1953)

Gabriella Piccinni (historian) 
The Sienese combine maximum attraction with maximum ignorance of their own history. It is the fruit, for example, only of the popular imagination that Siena had always been full of the indominable Ghibelline spirit, just like the myth that has grown up around the battle of Montaperti, great ephemeral victory for the Ghibelline Italians and for Siena. The Palio and Montaperti resemble each other: they are both memories of civic grandeur that found a foothold during the age of decline. (1998)

Luigi Bonelli - Felice Boghen (musicologists)

Topographically the Campo is shell-shaped: thus it has the schematic form of an instrument. The palaces around it enclose it like a perfectly shaped sounding board "The repercussion of sounds and noises that vibrate simultaneously and without interruption in various points of the piazza seems to be increased and disciplined by this immense, vibrating, concave instrument, to the point of becoming a symphony" (1928)

Antonio Zazzeroni (writer)
The art of playing the drum isn't taught at school. You play it if you love it, and love for the instrument is born and grows hand in hand with love for your Contrada. The classroom for your study is the street and the little square of your neighborhood. (1985)

Alberto Giannini (Drummer in the Piazza from 1934 to 1945)

Beating the drum is a great satisfaction to a Sienese because the drum marks the time of various occasions within the Contrada. I would say I had a rather natural inclincation for the drum, and I had the joy of playing it for thirteen different Contrade. When I made my first entrance into the Piazza with the drum, I was seized by a powerful emotion. I will always remember it as a special occasion in my life. (1998)

Luigi Testaferrata (journalist for Il Giornale)
"Being in Siena for those days is like being inside the quintessence of the world: as if you had taken the ideal ship and it had set out to circumnavigate all the experiences, adventures, risks, wild dares, exaltations, abstractions, sublimations, sinkings that have ever taken place in the history of man" (1986)

Marco Falorni (journalist for Il Cittadino)    
The Palio is one of those moments in which life is viewed as in a film. No technology, however sophisticated, could ever manage to concentrate in such few instants so great a legacy of memories, clear and wonderfully fused into the surrounding reality. In Siena, as everyone knows, life is measured in terms of Palios, and thus every Contrada member keeps his own personal memory "meter," from one victory to the next. (1998)

Walter Veltroni (Minister of Cultural Heritage)
Go to Siena, let's go there together, there are many things to learn and there's a wonderful spectacle to see. But please, don't make waves. And don't cheer for Contrade that don't belong to us.(1995)

Silvio Gigli (radio journalist for the RAI)
Siena triumphs immortal in a jubilation of flags In this jubilation of banners and flags, Siena triumphs as always immortal. (circa 1970)

Carlo Cassola (writer)  
Undoubtedly the Palio of Siena has a life of its own: it's had no need of more or less self-interested endowments to keep it on its feet. This is different from the cases of the Palio of Ferrara, or of the Saracen Jousting in Arezzo, or of Football in Costume in Florence, or of other public displays revived and kept alive by the hope of tourist speculation. (1946)

Liz Harris (journalist for The New Yorker)
The mood, now that the day of the race had finally come, was positively kept in check; there were few chants and cheers and almost no aggression. You couldn't call it a calm atmosphere; rather it was like breathing in a mass numbness.

Franco Cardini (historian)
But the worst lie is that the Palio is useless. Better to get rid of it altogether, this disagreeable category of the useful which has caused so much harm " and we see it every day " to the modern world. Useful why? Useful how? Useful to whom? The Palio is useless like art, like good cheer, like love, like eating well: if usefulness is synonymous with grey functionality and with profit for its own sake, then the Palio is certainly useless. (1988)

Beppe "Ciancone" Gentili (jockey)
Nothing is like winning the Palio of Siena. You can’t say it with words. (1969)

                      
Andrea "Aceto" de Gortes (jockey)
Because in Siena there’s this strange habit that if you don’t win the Palio, you lose it. (circa 1980)