Palio pride and passion

Describing the Palio as a horse race is a bit like saying the World Cup is just a game of football. Guide books tell you it's a fiercely contested competition between Siena's 17 contrades (districts), held in honour of the Virgin Mary - and that the rules are: there are no rules.

What they don't tell you is that the pride and passion which binds members of each contrade make the Corleone family look like the Andrews Sisters.

And the Virgin Mary had better stand clear or she'll get knocked down.

Marina, my oldest and best-travelled friend, once witnessed it and was keen to see it again. 'It's so exciting,' she said. 'And it's run around one of the most romantic squares I've ever seen.'

'Sounds fab,' I said, and off we went for the weekend.

We arrived in Siena - one of those almost supernaturally beautiful medieval cities found in Tuscany - to discover coachloads of languid American tourists wandering around a scene of hysterical busyness in which every square, dominated by a church, prepared for the eve-of-Palio banquet that night and the race itself on the morrow.

In the area devoted to the Civetta contrade, we found 15-year-old Lorenzo and his brother Stephano laying a trestle table for the feast and decorating the side alleys with lights and flags.

The brothers are fourth-generation Civettese (marrying outside one's district is still frowned on). Like every other horse in the race, theirs was being guarded round the clock - doping and nobbling by rival areas is by no means uncommon.

'Oh, Palio, Palio,' Stephano told us. 'How do you explain to the English? Palio is Siena and Siena is Palio.' Desperate to illustrate the race's magnitude, he said: 'When my contrade don't win, I cry.' In fact, the Civetta district last won back in l979, so there isn't a year when Stephano hasn't cried.

There was no crying that night, though, when we joined the Civettese for their pre-Palio banquet; just lots of singing and drinking and banging of spoons and scarfwearing (loyalty to one's contrade is marked bysporting a scarf in its colours).

'I wouldn't stay too late tonight if I were you,' warned Doug and Margaret, a Canadian couple and the only other tourists there. They never missed a Palio and were planning to stake out their spot in the Piazza del Campo from 5am the next morning until the race began at 7.45pm.

To get a seat - virtually impossible for a non-Sienese, you need to book six months in advance and pay at least £200.

We arrived in the Campo at noon next day to find the entire circumference of the square three deep in people and not a prayer for a spot by the finishing post. It was a strange experience, waiting in the Tuscan sun for the best part of seven hours with 40,000 other people for a race that would last 75 seconds, but it passed quickly. There was no drunkenness, no rowdiness and no aggression, just the occasional roar of pure schadenfreude from the Italians as one American tourist after another came a cropper on the freshly dampened dirt track which was as slippery as an ice rink.

Sometime around four the parade began, a long, glorious pageant, steeped in the 15th Century; knights in armour, four enormous white oxen bearing the Palio (a large white banner), a cavalry charge at full gallop, costume after elaborate costume and then, suddenly, an incredible, unsolicited hush as, one by one, the ten competing horses were led from the chapel, where they are blessed by a priest, to the starting line.

The start of the race - so very different from our own Derby - was a riotous affair. The jockeys fought, the horses fight. In the crowd there was most frantic gesticulatingand shouting. There were false starts and nearly-starts and the excitement reached fever pitch until, at last, all the horses are lined up ready for the off.

And they went like the wind, three laps of the Campo bareback at breakneck speed. It was an astonishing spectacle. The sense of speed and danger and the sheer glamour of it all shivered through the crowd and I got the briefest inkling of what all this glorious craziness was about - and then it was all over.

Marina was sure she'd seen Civetta first past the post - but then we ran into Doug who was rather overcome and still rooted to the spot he'd guarded so jealously for the past 15 hours.

History had been made, he said, babbling with excitement, because Leocorno's horse, the one which had parted from his jockey on the first bend, had actually pipped Civetta to the post and in the anomalous Palio it's the horse that wins, not the jockey.

Forty thousand people left the Campo in eerie silence; no pushing or jostling, just the odd bit of noiseless weeping. Reluctant to bump into a lachrymose Stephano, Marina and I headed off for a pizza and home.

Unless you're lucky enough to have hitched your colours to the winning contrade's mast, Siena's a pretty strange place to be on Palio night.

Getting there

The Palio will be run on July 2 and August 16 this year. Italian Journeys can arrange packages to Siena to see it. A three-night stay at Relais La Suvera, including return flights from Gatwick to Pisa with British Airways and car hire, costs from £769. Call 020 7 370 6002.