Monument to the Immigrant

Elevator to Little Palermo

Recently, the United States celebrated its 250^th birthday. I thought it a good time for a tablespoon of introspection.  Not a self-examination of myself, mind you.  Enough of me already seems to leak into what I write.  Rather, I found myself wondering how much America owes to its Italian heritage.  The thought struck me when I saw a picture of Dean Martin placarded inside an elevator, of all places, during a getaway to the “Big Easy” — New Orleans.  

Given our frequent travels, it would seem we have developed a serious inability to commit to a single zip code.  Maybe so. But Dean got me thinking.  Suppose I could press a button beside his picture and when the elevator doors next opened, find myself transported into some event significant to Italian-American involvement during our nascent nation-building years.  Where would I land?  As it happened, I found just the sort of place I was looking for: a museum devoted to the positive and negative aspects of Italian immigration to this area.  I suspected this particular elevator ride was going to have some very dark floors.

The story of these hyphenated Italian nation-builders, however, begins well before the birth of the United States, with familiar Italian-born Christopher Columbus and his 1492 voyage that opened the Americas to European exploration.  Another stop on another floor might follow Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first to sail into NY Harbor, and on up the ladder of time to Florentine explorer and navigator  

Filippo Mazzei

Amerigo Vespucci, whose multiple voyages to the New World eventually gave the Americas their name.  Then there is Filippo Mazzei, a multitalented Tuscan-born physician, philosopher, diplomat, winemaker, merchant, and author.  In London, Mazzei met Benjamin Franklin and shared his idea for importing Tuscan products to the New World.  After arriving in Virginia, he visited Thomas Jefferson at his estate, and the two became good friends.

    In 1774, Mazzei published a pamphlet containing the phrase, "All men are by nature equally free and independent." [5]  His writings on liberty were directly incorporated into the Declaration of Independence in the memorable words, “All men are created equal.”  Clearly, the United States is undeniably shaped by Italian explorers, thinkers, craftsmen, and immigrants at virtually every stage of its development. 

My elevator might stop on several other important floors adding further testaments to the list, but a complete conjugation of every Italian contribution, would require an elevator shaft outstretching well beyond the high-wire performances of the Italian steelworkers who later built New York City’s skyscrapers.  To portray the whole story would mean recounting the struggles, successes, and lasting impact of every Italian emigrant who arrived during the Great Immigration between 1890 to 1920 when four million, mostly southern Italians, arrived on Ellis Island alone.  Some accounts are supported by hard facts.  Others survive as little more than glimpses.  And one of the most interesting glimpses, at least to me, led south.

While New York’s Ellis Island served as an enormous national gateway for European immigration, I was surprised to discover that New Orleans, though nowhere near as large an operation as Ellis Island, was another major arrival hub.  New Orleans functioned as an important port of arrival, especially for Sicilian immigration into the South.  Its Italian population was not simply a portion of northeastern Ellis Island émigrés who migrated south after landing in New York.  

More than 80% of Italian immigrants arriving in New Orleans were Sicilian.  I found this interesting particularly after spending time in Sicily and writing at length about our time there.  Sicilian migration to Louisiana was already substantial by the 1870s and 1880s, largely due to a well-established Palermo-to-New Orleans shipping route connected to their citrus and sugar trade.  Passenger manifests document ships sailing directly from Palermo and arriving in New Orleans throughout the period.

The journey was hardly a cruise.  But for thousands of Sicilians, it was a passage toward a life they hoped would be better than the one they were leaving behind.  Garibaldi had foretold a better life following Italy’s unification, but his idealistic vision of political participation, civil rights, and economic fairness collided quickly with political reality.  Northern Italy enjoyed the fruits of modern industrialization while southern Italy and Sicily remained mired in poverty, much of it under absentee landowners.  The peasant was still, in many respects, essentially a serf.  Emigration offered an escape from subsistence living and, perhaps more importantly, the possibility of owning a farm, a shop, or some other small piece of the future. 

New Arrivals

    Many of the newly arrived dreamers concentrated in the Lower French Quarter, better known today for Mardi Gras along Bourbon Street than for the Sicilian immigrants who once crowded its streets.  Soon the shiploads after shiploads of immigrants saw the concentration of Italians in New Orleans climb to the highest in the state.  By 1900, New Orleans had the largest Italian community in the American South, with roughly 20,000 people of Italian background.  The city acquired a nickname that tells you something about the community that had taken root there: Little Palermo.

By the end of the immigration wave stretching from the late 1880s to 1920, more than four million Italians had arrived in America.  Many arriving in New Orleans did not stay.  Some moved North; others scattered throughout Louisiana and the South in search of better paying jobs.  Thousands went to work on sugar and strawberry plantations, other type farms, and other communities, while others remained in New Orleans to gradually grow to become merchants, fruit sellers, grocers, and restaurateurs.  In other words, they began doing what immigrants do: work, adapt, open businesses, raise families, and quietly become part of the place that initially regarded them as outsiders.

But there was a darker side to the welcome.  Louisiana planters looked to Sicily for a solution to their labor needs following emancipation.  With the end of slavery, immigration, in their eyes, offered a replacement for the loss of the black slave population and the possibility of restoring something resembling the antebellum plantation system they previously enjoyed.  By September 1881, three steamships a month were running between New Orleans and Sicily, at a cost of forty dollars per person.  For those without forty dollars, there was another arrangement.

The padrone system, sponsored by plantation owners and labor contractors, employed  recruiters to bring Italians to southern Louisiana.  It was distressingly similar to the centuries-old system many of these immigrants had hoped to escape.  Corrupt, exploitative, and often little more than indentured servitude, it could enslave entire families almost as soon as they arrived.

Others were ensnarled in the human trafficking scheme even before they departed.  Steamship advertisements helped sell the dream.  Brochures promised fine living quarters, the opportunity to purchase land, and a climate that sounded suspiciously Goldilocks-like: not too hot, not too cold, just right for working the fields.  They went so far as to advance funds to those willing to travel to America but lacked the necessary capital.  After arriving they could work off their passage fee - just sign here.  Even though the Foran Act of 1885 prohibited the system, it continued through much of the golden age of Italian immigration.

Life Magazine, 1911 Anti-Italian
Cartoon

        Some of the arrivals found jobs on the city docks unloading citrus and Mississippi River cargo.  Others helped build levees and railroads or worked the farms and plantations.  The area grew denser with Italian immigrants.  The need to work often eliminated any chance for their children’s education who grew to join their fathers in the fields.  Some resorted to thievery to survive, some to prostitution.

As with many immigration tsunamis, the people already there began to get nervous and grew to view the new arrivals as underclass “peasantry.”  Gradually, economic competition, overcrowding, cultural suspicion, and fear began to ferment into something uglier.  There were accusations that immigrants were taking jobs from Americans, that money sent back to Italy was hurting local businesses, that Italians carried diseases such as yellow fever and cholera, and that they were connected to violence and criminal organizations.  The result was a growing political, cultural, and ethnic hostility toward people of Italian ancestry known as Italophobia.  The native population had, conveniently, managed to forget that their own ancestors had once been newcomers trying to build a new life.  

On the evening of October 15, 1890, New Orleans Irish Police Chief, a thirty-four-year-old David Hennessy was assassinated.^[4]  Hennessy’s killers were widely believed to be Italian, which was hardly surprising in a city already simmering with anti-Italian prejudice.  Mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare did little to cool things down.  He declared Hennessy the “victim of Sicilian vengeance” and called upon citizens to “teach these people a lesson they will not forget.” 

American newspapers largely anti-Italian in their coverage, helped to cement the widespread belief that Italian organized crime had been responsible for the killing.  Newspaper stories portrayed them as dangerous and a criminal menace. Newspaper stories portrayed them as dangerous and a criminal menace.  The Mafia, a criminal organization associated in the public imagination with theft, terror, and murder, became the convenient explanation.

Mass arrests of Italians for the murder followed as anti-Italian sentiment reached a fever pitch fueled by the rhetoric being voiced.  Largely anti-Italian American newspaper accounts added to the widespread belief that Italian-American organized crime was responsible for the killing of the police chief.  The perpetrators were presumed to have been involved with the Mafia and therefore deserving of their fate.  The murder had become something larger than a murder investigation.  And the fuse had been lit.

The Old New Orleans Parish Prison

     Chief Hennessy had a colorful and strong-arm past that provided any number of motives and enemies, other than the Mafia, none of which the police seemed particularly interested in investigating.  It was, in effect, a “round up the usual suspects” operation without regard to the much larger struggle beneath the surface.  In the shocking aftermath that followed, the city passed an ordinance giving control of New Orleans dock work to the newly formed Louisiana Construction and Improvement Corporation, headed by several city leaders entangled with Hennessy.  Had his death been convenient, even arranged, with Italians the convenient scapegoat?  Things certainly changed.  Italian waterfront merchants and workers, who had been making remarkable economic progress, were initially dominated and then eliminated as competitors.

The Italian community had become an easy target for political rivalry, commercial competition, and the racial politics of the era.  Within 24 hours of Hennessy’s death, 45 Italians had been arrested.  By some accounts, as many as 250 Italians were rounded up.  Most were eventually released for lack of evidence.   For several days, Italians were afraid to leave their homes. but eventually the furor died down and they returned to work.  Nineteen Italians, through involved with the assassination, were arrested and held in the Parish Prison prior to the trial that followed.

Nine went to trial beginning February 16, 1891.  There was only one problem.  The evidence was weak, contradictory, or based on hearsay.  Six men were acquitted and three trials ended in mistrials.  That should have been the end of it.  It wasn't.  The six acquitted men were not released.  Instead, they were returned to prison pending another charge of “lying in wait” with intent to commit murder.^[8]  Prosecutors admitted they would not pursue the additional charges, but the men remained behind bars.  This decision would prove fatal for many of them.  The legal system had reached a peculiar destination where an acquittal apparently did not necessarily include the benefit of being released.

The New Orleans Henry Clay Statue
(Note the Ad for the OPera Il Trovatore by
Italian Giuseppe Verdi)

      The court’s decision infuriated local residents.  The city, already awash in anti-Italian sentiment fueled the belief that Italian organized crime had somehow corrupted the jury.  How much of this was true will never be known but the Italian community was an easy target to blame for political reasons, struggles for commercial dominance, white supremacy issues.

Italian-American voters were also known to favor the city’s political machine over that of the mayor, whose own role in inciting the violence that followed may well have been tied to an attempt to
use government power against political opponents and the strong Italian voting bloc.^[2]  Mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare’s role in inciting what followed may well have gone too far when he complained that the city had become attractive to "the worst classes of Europe.  Also fueling a desire for vengeance was the misinformation and newspapers articles stating that the jury had been bribed by organized crime thought under Italian control.  Whatever the mixture of motives, the result was combustible.

On the morning of 14 March 1891, one day after the court verdicts, an ad appeared in local newspapers prepared by a group of about 150 people calling themselves the “Committee of Safety” calling a mass meeting at the City’s statue of Henry Clay near the prison.  Citizens were told to "come prepared for action."^[7]  They were.

A mob estimated four to five thousand strong gathered at the statue and included some of the city's most prominent citizens.^[2]  Among them, Attorney William S. Parkerson exhorted the crowd to "set aside the verdict of that infamous jury, every one of whom is a perjurer and a scoundrel."  When the speech ended, the emboldened crowd marched to the prison.  What happened next was not justice

Mob Storms Parish Prison

    Provoked by speakers and city leaders, the enormous mob forced open the prison doors where the men were being held.  A relatively small, disciplined vigilante “execution squad” within the mob carried out what became the largest known mass lynching in Louisiana history.  Eleven of the nineteen Italian men indicted in the Hennessy case were lynched or shot.  None had been convicted.  Some never even tried.  Six reportedly suffered more than one hundred gunshot wounds, many to the head.  They were killed, as one account put it,  "on proof” of being 'dagoes' (Italians). ^[7]  Their only crime was that they were Italian.

The incident reverberated far beyond New Orleans.  The New York Times published a lengthy statement charging city politicians with responsibility for the lynching of the Italians.   The Italian consul Pasquale Corte in New Orleans protested the killings and was himself threatened at gunpoint.  He eventually left the city in May 1891 at his government's direction.  Italy took a further step and recalled its ambassador from Washington sparking rumors of war. The United States recalled its delegation from Rome.  The Italian government demanded that the mob leaders be prosecuted and reparations paid.  When the United States declined to prosecute those responsible, a grand jury was convened to decide whether to bring criminal charges against individuals involved with the lynching. 

The grand jury’s conclusions were, to put it mildly, unsatisfying.  The judge presiding over the grand jury was a longtime friend of several lynch-mob participants.  The report concluded that members of the Hennessy jury had been bribed to acquit the Italians yet offered no proof.  No criminal charges followed.  It also claimed it could not identify the participants in the lynching.  No indictments followed that, either.  Increased anti-Italian sentiment led to calls for immigration restrictions, with the word “Mafia” entering the American lexicon amid claims that had never been substantiated.  

Then, in April 1892, approximately one year following the lynchings, the United States paid $2,211.90 in compensation to each family of the eleven victims.^[10]  Only a few months later, in July 1892, President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed “Columbus Day” as a one-time national celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World.  At least in part, it was seen as a symbolic gesture intended to ease tensions with Italian-Americans and the Italian government without directly confronting the political forces that had allowed the violence to go unpunished. ^[9].  

History has a strange sense of timing.  We tend to perceive the past steeped in the paradigms of our time.  Conjecture is a convivial pastime but putting ourselves in another person’s shoes is much harder.  Imagine being one of those Italians stepping off a ship in New Orleans.  You have arrived carrying hopes and aspirations shaped by what you were escaping, what you had been promised, and what you imagined the New World might be.  No Statue of Liberty greeted these travelers to the promising new world only 100 plus degree heat, hard labor, and with each boatload the growing antipathy of indigenous nativism.  And there was, increasingly, the hostility of people who had decided that you did not quite belong.  For decades after the events of 1891, New Orleans children taunted Italian-Americans with the question: "Who killa da chief?"^[4]  The words became a cruel echo of a terrible event.  And echoes, like memories, have a curious half-life. They can fade for generations without ever quite disappearing.

While the story remains more widely known in Italy, this incident has largely disappeared from American memory.  I certainly knew nothing about it.  Not until I pressed a few elevator buttons and found myself emerging into a different world.  There, on a wall, tucked low among photographs, memorabilia, and artifacts, I found a framed official document.  The sort of document that can make history suddenly feel less like history and more like something that happened to actual people. 

First, it was a proclamation from President Harrison.  And then, much farther along the elevator shaft of time, came this other document.  One hundred twenty-eight years later, on 12 April 2019, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell issued a Certificate of Recognition at the American Italian Cultural Center in New Orleans, formally apologizing for the 1891 lynching of eleven Italian-American men of the city.  It was of such note that it was attended by the Italian Ambassador to the U.S. and the Italian Consul General in Houston, TX.

This framed certificate acknowledged what had happened and, importantly, acknowledged the complicity of political leadership, the anti-Italian climate in which the crimes occurred, and the fact that no one had ever been indicted or prosecuted for perpetrating them.  It offered the city’s deepest apologies to the victims’ descendants and to New Orleans’ Italian-American community.^[6]

And then it did something else.  It recognized the numerous contributions of Italian-Americans to the cultural and economic life of New Orleans and the nation.  The final sentiment looked forward as much as backward: recognition of the anti-immigrant sentiment of the past, coupled with the hope that New Orleans would remain welcoming to immigrant groups in the future.

Sometimes it takes centuries for justice to rear its head.  Sometimes an apology arrives long after everyone who needed to hear it is gone.  When in the colors of forgiveness, there are no red eyes.  And sometimes recognition of achievement comes only after the people who did the building have disappeared from the scaffolding.

    I began this little journey wondering how much America owes to Italy.  The answer, I suspected, would be impossible to gauge, especially in New Orleans, of all places.  But I learned that it began with explorers whose names became geography.  In the thinkers whose words found their way into the language of American liberty.  In the immigrants who crossed an ocean seeking asylum because staying home had become untenable.  It is in the dockworkers, farmers, grocers, fruit sellers, restaurateurs, laborers, craftsmen, and steelworkers who helped build a country that did not always welcome them while they were building it.  Perhaps that is the oddest thing about the American story.  We are forever constructing the country and then forgetting who carried the hods full of bricks. 

     Our adventure began with a Dean Martin photograph in an elevator.  It ended with eleven men, a city, an apology, and a much longer view of what it means to become American.  Maybe that is the real lesson of pressing the buttons.  You never quite know what you will find on each floor you reach.  But if you are willing to get off the elevator when the doors open, history, that fervent chronicler of time, may still be standing there, waiting to introduce itself.

From That Rogue Tourist,
Paolo

References:

1.  1.  Sicilian Heritage, https://sicilianheritage.com/immigration/passenger-voyages-from-palermo-to-new-orleans-1903/

2.  2.  1891 New Orleans Lynchings, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings?utm_source=chatgpt.com

3.  3.  David Hennessy, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hennessy#CITEREFGambino2000

4.  4.  The Crescent City Lynchings: The Murder of Chief Hennessy, the New Orleans "Mafia" Trials, and the Parish Prison Mob, Tom Smith, 2007.

5. 5.  Philip Mazzei, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Mazzei

6. 6.  Official Apology of the City of New Orleans, Italian Government, Ambasciata d’Italia a Washington

7. 7.  Vendetta: The True Story of the Largest Lynching in U.S. History (2^nd ed.). Toronto: Guernica, Gambino, Richard, (2000)

8.  8.  Italian Louisiana: History, Heritage & Tradition, Alan Gauthreaux, The History Press, 2014

9.  9.  Columbus Day, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day

10 10. On This Day in Mob History, https://nationalcrimesyndicate.com

Circling a Square

 Circling a Square

Class of 2017 "Doolies" in Dining Hall
During Basic Cadet Summer Training

    Recently, in The Spaghetti Western blog, I found myself reminiscing about my childhood cap-piston cowboy days as a novice “square shooter.”  The phrase seemed fitting for a kid who imagined the Wild West as a place where every problem could be solved with a six-shooter and a trusty horse. 

Years later, only days after graduation from high school, I entered a very different frontier as a newly minted Air Force freshman cadet, known affectionately or perhaps not so affectionately, as a doolie.  The term stems from the Greek word doulos, meaning “slave” or “servant” and served as a daily reminder that I’d arrived at the bottom rung of a very tall ladder.  I soon discovered another kind of square.  This time I wasn’t playing “square shooter.”  I was being taught to become a “square eater” in the Academy dining hall.

While upperclassmen ate like ordinary human beings, we had not yet earned that luxury.  We had
rules instead: a strict code governing newly arrived novitiates like me.  We followed two rules at table:

"U-Gotta-Wan-It" ... A Newly Arrived 
Doolie Meets an Upperclassman

the first was “eyes in the boat,” meaning our gaze had to remain fixed on the center of our plates throughout the meal.  As young eaglets being groomed for life in the “wild blue,” the nautical metaphor seemed misplaced.  I wondered silently why a boat had wandered into an Air Force dining hall. Of course, no one asked for my opinion.  While the Academy had many traditions, soliciting feedback from a doolie wasn’t among them. 

The second mealtime canon was even more memorable: we had to “square corners” with our forks.  Rather than lifting a fork naturally in a graceful arc from plate to mouth, we were required to move the utensil in a precise square pattern, straight up from the plate, then directly toward our waiting mouths.  Squaring corners was a ritual designed to build discipline, precision, and attention to detail.  We did it everywhere, even in hallways when an upperclassman approached.  Apparently even mashed potatoes and smacking against the wall became character-building exercises. 

By Parent’s Weekend I’d lost weight.  Whether the result of fork drills, a summer of exercise, or simply the realization that cafeteria food was now a training method rather than a meal, remains open for debate.  But the future would see this ingrained discipline and consistency rewarded in the strict, to the letter, adherence to procedure and checklists.  Time and again it saved my life.

Conversation was another matter.  At meals, you never spoke unless addressed.  Between forkfuls, answering questions became yet another exercise to endure.  I vividly recall one upper-class

To Young Me, It Was Something Called 
"The Kentucky Derby"

cadet from bluegrass Kentucky who decided to interrogate me about horses.  Unfortunately, there was little I could do to shield myself from his criticism.  He’d chosen a subject about which my expertise was roughly equivalent to my current knowledge of quantum physics.  I had no idea what the top three races were beyond a lucky guess at the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs.  Horses were a distant concept for a kid raised in an industrial New England town.  He may have grown up surrounded by stables.  I considered myself fortunate to have had a cat.

A Kilo of Equina Please

    Being Italian, however, I did know a little something about horses ― horsemeat (carne equina) is a popular meal choice in Italy.  Wisely, I didn’t mention this fact that I’d once heard during family mealtime where conversation was seldom calm dialogue, and only “any-which-way” strategically timed fork movements guaranteed your plate would remain filled.  Somewhere in those boisterous exchanges there was also made mention of an ancient horse race in a faraway place I was unfamiliar with.  It was an obscure reference and topically in bad taste for me to voice to someone so obviously keen on and especially during Academy mealtime interrogation.  A doolie offering unsolicited foreign historical commentary was about as welcome as a horse wandering into formation.  I’d need to wait a year or two.

Time drip-dripped and decades passed.  Eventually, Maria Elena and I, our language fluency lacking, discovered this foreign place together, extracting meaning from it in a way only first-time tourists can ― slowly, enthusiastically, and occasionally without knowing exactly what we were looking at.  In Tuscany, we eventually reached what seemed like a fairy-tale place following a brief train ride from Certaldo and our agriturismo home base, Tenuta Torciano (click).  On the

Tower-Laced Skyline of San Gimignano 

horizon stood the remaining towers of San Gimignano, rising like medieval exclamation points against the Tuscan sky.¹

Then came Siena which revealed itself slowly, almost theatrically.  The memory that remains most vivid is the great shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, where we sat on the warm brick pavement, shifting from one patch of shade to another as the slender fourteenth-century Torre del Mangia clock tower cast its moving shadow across the square.  The tower seemed less like a building than a giant sundial, quietly reminding us that, as always, time was passing.

We wandered through the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena’s

Effects of Good and Bad Government Side by
Side in the Hall of the Nine, Palazzo Pubblico

Gothic town hall, and stood before two monumental paintings, Good Government and Bad Government.  Their immense scale and historical significance left a lasting impression.  Today copies, greatly scaled down copies, hang on our walls.  Those moments remain among our treasured travel memories.  Yet whenever we think of Siena, another image comes to mind, one we have yet to experience.

Though, in my humble estimation, it is far too early to rush around checking off the final items on a “bucket list,” as a return to Siena has earned on ours.  We did not miss its

Started Mine Early

most celebrated spectacle through poor planning or chance.  We missed it for the simplest reason of all: Timing.  

This extravaganza occurs only twice each year.  And true to its rare schedule, it arrives with enormous drama and is over almost as quickly as it begins.  Its infrequency is part of its magic, drawing visitors from across the globe who compete for the simple privilege of being there.

On those occasions, Siena transforms.  The city swells to spill over capacity, like a stadium overflowing before a World Cup final.  Crowds pour into the Piazza del Campo, claiming every possible viewing position, hours, sometimes days in advance.  In the center of the square, spectators stand shoulder to shoulder inside an dirt track as the piazza becomes the stage for one of Italy’s most extraordinary traditions.  This is not a medieval reenactment staged for tourists.  It is not a flag-throwing performance, although one can precede the race, nor a nostalgic nod to another era.  This is the Palio di Siena.  

Piazza del Campo on Race Day

The Palio is a breathtaking bareback horse race and a fiercely cherished civic tradition whose origins stretch back centuries, first mentioned in a document dating to 1239.²  Piazza del Campo is not merely a beautiful square.  It is transformed into a living theater.  Siena remains one of those rare cities where communal structures still shape modern life, and the Palio is its most vivid expression — a spectacle carrying nearly eight centuries of memory, rivalry, faith, and pageantry.

The race itself has evolved significantly.  For centuries, it was run “alla lunga,” a long-distance course beginning outside the city walls and ending at the Cathedral.  The route was thrilling but dangerous as horses thundered through narrow medieval streets where stone walls and sharp turns left little room for error.²  Its deeper roots reach into medieval public games held in Piazza that included contests of strength, jousting, even bullfights.  By the 13th century, Siena was already holding horse races in honor of the Virgin Mary. 

    The first circular Palio or “alla tonda” held in the Campo in 1633, establishing the form recognized today.  But calling the Palio a sporting event only tells part of the story.  It is more accurately a civic and religious ritual. 

By 1701, the twice-yearly race had been fixed on important Marian feast days: 2 July, dedicated to the Madonna di Provenzano, and 16 August, dedicated to the Assumption of Mary.  The July race is beloved but the August steeplechase, associated with the Assumption, thought more prestigious, is exalted.  Together, they are not simply two competitions on a calendar, they are two acts of civic devotion.

At its heart, the Palio belongs not to tourists but the living heartbeat of Siena’s seventeen Contrade (districts), which extend outward from the piazza.  These are historic districts that have shaped the city’s identity since the Middle Ages.  Originally medieval military companies, the tight-knit Contrade evolved into neighborhoods, social clubs, extended families, and cultural identity anchors, each carrying generations of memories.  To Sienese citizens, the Palio goes much deeper than a horserace.  It is history made visible.  It is the sound of centuries galloping through the streets.

Each Contrada has its own church, fountain, colors,

Surrounding the Piazza - a Breakout
of Siena's 17 Contrade

animal symbol, centuries of lore, and rivalries.  Some rivalries are friendly.  Others are definitely not.  These relationships shape alliances, betrayals, and race strategy more than any horse or jockey can.  Losing is taken personally, particularly when the winner happens to be a rival Contrada.  It is nowhere near the severity of the Capulet and Montague feud in Shakespeare’s imagined Verona, but after centuries of wins and losses, outsiders can scarcely fathom the emotional toll extracted by the swings from delirious victory to agonizing defeat. 

The pieces of a winning strategy begin to jell well before the horses enter the Campo.  The winning formula takes a special sauce that blends the quality of the horse, the jockey’s tactics, alliances, rivalries, and as might be expected, money.  In fact, being first across the finish line may not be the most important consideration.  If your sworn enemy is racing, what’s wrong with making sure they lose, even at the cost of your own victory?

Then come the true heroes, the horses.  Jockeys are hired mercenaries.  Horses are treated like sacred champions, with some winning horses celebrated for decades.  You might think that every Contrada maintained its own stable to groom their future race champions.  Not so.

Horses and riders (cavalli e fantini) are assigned formally only days before the race.  In Piazza del Campo a drawing of lots occurs at a highly charged public meeting known as the la Tratta (The Assignment).  This lottery is designed to eliminate favoritism by making horse assignments intentionally uncontrollable, thus preventing a district from providing its own horse.  In the space available only ten Contrade compete in each Palio.  Seven are selected because they had not raced in that same Palio the previous year; the remaining three are drawn by lottery from the remaining eligible districts. 

A district can only hope for a horse with proven Palio experience, one that can accelerate well during the start, and is agile enough to survive the brutal turns.  However, captains do participate in preselecting and testing horses for the lottery pool.  Technically this is not “choosing your horse,” but it does allow captains to influence which horses are suitable for the pool.  Captains try to avoid a situation where one super‑horse dominates which makes the entire Palio a single-horse drama.  If the pool contains many strong horses, the lottery proves less risky.  If the pool contains several mediocre horses, strategy, jockey selection and alliances matter more.  Captains influence their preferences by advocating for or against certain horses by arguing a horse is unsafe, inexperienced, or does not fit Palio traditions (e.g., proven runners, “veterans”).

Once a horse is drawn, the Contrada’s racehorse groom and guardian, the barbaresco takes custody of the horse.  From that moment on, the horse becomes the center of the district’s life until the race.  It becomes almost sacred to the Contrada, blessed in the district’s church, and guarded day and night.  Only following assignment can the chess match of maneuvering fully play out for advantage through strategic deal-making, sometimes with a hint of scheming involved. 

Jockeys are selected by individual Contrada not for the piety they display during church services but for their cunning.  They need to dominate the famously chaotic mossa (the start), block rivals; negotiate the dangers of riding bareback on this treacherous track; and, above all, follow contrada orders, even when those orders mean sacrificing a chance to win in order to prevent a rival from doing so.

And then there is the money.  What outsiders might call cheating has been woven into the tradition.  It is no secret that Contrada negotiate covert pacts with one another:

“You help us at the start.”
      “Create traffic to block our rival.”
      “If you win, we’ll fund your feast, if you ….”
      “Support us now and we’ll support you later”

Siena does not describe this as corruption.  Instead, they prefer to elevate its characterization to “ritualized negotiation” and part of tradition.  Counter alliances and secrecy are all part of the negotiations.  It is “pay to play” morphed into “pay to win.”  It seems Sienese horse racing, having arrived centuries before John Lyly wrote in 1578 that “the rules of fair play do not apply in love and war,” had already decided that the Palio belonged in the same category.  Fair play, apparently, is negotiable. ³ 

 Then comes the mossa.  The Start of the Palio,²

Palio Start With the Rincorsa Horse Far  
to the Right Ready to Storm the Line

(click) unlike most horse racing starts, can determine as much as 70 percent of the race outcome.

§  Nine horses line up between ropes.  The tenth horse, the rincorsa, waits behind and outside the rear rope.

§  There is no mechanical starting gate as with a thoroughbred horse race.  No orderly countdown.  Instead, the rincorsa charges into the pack, triggering the start.

§  Jockeys immediately shout, shove, block, and fight for position.

§    False starts are common.

§ A perfect start can make the race unwinnable for everyone else.

The horses run three clockwise laps around the Campo on a dirt track laid over the brick piazza.  Danger is part of the tradition’s identity and like Spain’s Running of the Bulls is intentionally built in. 

Crash at the San Martino Turn

The Campo’s geometry creates sharp, uneven turns, none more notorious than the especially treacherous downhill San Martino turn back toward the tower.  Horses skid, jockey’s slam into one another, and falls are common.

Once underway, strategy becomes brutally simple:

If ahead: block aggressively, force a rival wide, use the whip strategically even against other            horses and riders.

If behind: exploit alliances, disrupt the leader’s rhythm, pray for a helping hand of someone            ahead makes a mistake or falls.

After all that buildup, the actual competition is breathtakingly brief.  The Palio may be one of Europe’s oldest, fiercest, and most theatrical of civic rituals, but it lasts all of about ninety seconds.  Centuries of tradition, months of anticipation, days of maneuvering, religious ceremonies, political alliances, money, strategy, horses, jockeys, rivalries—and then it is over before you have time to finish a cup of coffee.

It is legitimate for a riderless horse to win, for the horse is the competitor, not the jockey.  It has happened.  Most recently, in August 2023, “Crowned Goose,” representing the Oca Contrada, lost its jockey mid‑race yet crossed the finish line first, securing the victory.  Imagine spending months preparing for victory, watching your jockey

A Case Where a Riderless Horse Wins!

hit the dirt, and discovering that your horse has decided to finish the job without him.  That, in Siena, is called winning.

Victory celebrations can last all year with the winning Contrada holding feasts, parades, and rituals that can continue for months.  The triumphant district receives the pallium, a hand-painted silk banner that becomes an object of enormous pride to the Contrada.  History records that the last-place finisher received a pig.  A document from 1239 records a man being fined for refusing the pig awarded to the loser.  Even in medieval Siena, apparently, nobody wanted to be reminded of coming in last.  Today, the Contrada that comes in dead last is said to have “preso la cuffia,” literally “taken the cap.”  It’s not a prize but a mark of symbolic shame that Siena uses for social and political humiliation.  It matters because Palio rivalries are intense and deeply historical.  In the July 3, 2026 Palio, the Nicchio district “took the cuffia,” becoming not only the last place finisher but grabbed the added distinction as the “nonna del Palio.”  This distinction as “Grandmother of the Palio” marks this district as the Contrada with the longest victory drought. ⁴  True to its name Snail (Nicchio) indeed.  As I hope to have inferred by this point, Siena takes its races seriously.  

The Palio has even found its way onto the big screen.  In the 2026 romantic comedy, Solo Mio, staring Kevin James with a cameo by Andrea Bocelli, a brief scene offers a glimpse of the race from a balcony.  But Siena insists the Palio exists for Sienese identity, not entertainment for tourists.  Nonetheless, thousands descend on the city, crowding into the square or pay €1000-€1500 for the

privilege of watching from private balconies overlooking the Campo.  

Viewing from the square is free, non-ticketed, and first come, first served.  But wow, hold your horses.  Free does not mean easy.  Watching from the center of the Campo may be the most taxing way to experience the Palio: no shade, no seating, no bathrooms, and, once the crowd is packed in, no easy exit until the race is over.

But from wherever we watch it, we want to be there.  Because the Palio survives not as a reenactment of the past but as the past still being lived.  It binds neighborhoods, preserves medieval identity, turns rivalries into ritual, and compresses nearly eight centuries of memory into ninety explosive seconds. 

And perhaps that is why the story comes full circle for me.  As a child, I imagined the Wild West as a place where a horse, a six-shooter, and a little courage could solve almost anything.  At the Academy, I added “square eater,” one fork movement at a time, to “square shooter” and wondered why.  And like Daniel LaRusso, the Karate Kid endured “wax on, wax off,” I later realized it was all in preparation for what lay ahead.  Like rounding the corners of a square into a circle through continuous drill, rehearsal, and simple traditional repetition like the Palio, it becomes a part of us. 

In Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, I recently read:

“All we have is the story we tell.  Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character – what we believe – none of it is real; it’s all part of the story we tell.  But here’s the thing: it’s our goddamned story!”

Unfortunately, had this been written years ago, I’d have had a story to tell that upperclassman.  One not simply adding to our rhythmic eating but one appending a wowing fourth race to the rather stodgy list of races he expected from me.  Damn the ensuing rebuff and demerits for speaking out of turn I’d have reaped.

Just maybe it’s time.  After all these years, bucket list aside, I find myself wanting to return to Siena.  Siena, where seventeen ancient rivalries, ten horses, ten jockeys, a piazza full of humanity, and centuries of Italian history merge into one magnificent ninety-second sprint on an improvised circular track inside a square piazza.  Siena, where the Palio becomes part of my goddamned story. 

See you in Siena.  

From that Rogue Tourist, 
Paolo

 

Refs:

1.  Tenuta Torciano - Wine and Tastings in San Gimignano, https://www.torciano.com/en/

2.  Race Start Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDafJprXa90

3.  Origin of “All Is Fair in Love and War,” John Lyly novel “Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit”

4.  www.https://gazzettadisiena.it, 4 July 2026 report of 3 July 2026 race