About a week ago, for ninety seconds, the whole of Siena held its breath while ten horses tore around the sloping shell of the Piazza del Campo, and then, it was over: a winner, a banner, a district gone mad with joy. That race, the Palio di Provenzano, run every second of July in honor of the Madonna the city has cherished since the sixteenth century, is the part the world comes to see.
But the horses are only the visible part of something far older and far deeper, and the visitors who pack up the morning after the race really only saw the last page of a book that goes on being written all year long.
