Things that happen in Siena at the weekend...

A weekend of much interest- and it is not over yet! It started with that lovely Italian habit- the Aperitivo, on Friday evening- mine is a Campari Spriz…

Then the drums started again- something that all denizens of Siena have to get used to.  

                                      

There has been a small boy under my window banging away at a drum for a week or so, with someone beside him that I suppose to be his father. This has not really annoyed me- I have found it rather charming, still being in a very friendly mood towards my adopted city and its peculiarities. I am now technically a Valdimontone, because I reside in the neighbourhood of that contrada. This boy under my window has been practicing for the competition which took place at the Piazza del Campo yesterday  afternoon- it was for all the young drummers and the flag bearers who have to learn how to engage in the intricate throwing of the flags- the origin of which  is apparently a form of martial signalling to be seen from a distance.  All the contradas have been out practicing, and Siena has been filled for weeks with that insistent ancient sound echoing between the walls of the narrow lanes.

After a nail biting finale yesterday at the Piazza del Campo in front of all the proud parents and the tourists that are still here in quite some numbers, the contrada of the Istrice (the porcupine) won after a most elegant display. 

                                             

I continued to the north of the town, where I met up with my Japanese friend  Satomi from the Dante Alighieri language school, close to the northern gate- the Camollia. This is Istrice territory and everyone  was out in force celebrating their win- not a table was to be found- but Satomi had already reserved in a rather good place which was able to produce something that pleases both the Japanese and the Swedes- a selection of raw fish starters. Oysters, tuna, and several other types of fish I cannot name and, to complete the oriental display, some seaweed. Yum...!      

                                  

To start with there were three of us in my class at the language school- Satomi and I were joined for the  first week by a very pretty young Japanese boy, Kento. However, our teacher Andrea decided to remove him and put him in another class because he was clearly unhappy with the way our conversation tended to go.  Kento loves football and wants to talk about that. Satomi and I are boring old women to him of course. We want to talk about history and culture and so does Andrea, so that is OK. The three of us now tend to stumble across a subject matter which is absorbing at nine o clock in the morning, and then we talk until 12 when the lession is over. We will have run into plenty of grammar on the way.  We have arrived at the rather complicated  stage of Italian grammar when  we encounter the  congiuntivo imperfetto, the traspassato prossimo and the miserable condizionale passato and others such horrors which I cannot even remember the name of , let alone utter.  Now, Satomi is a lovely lady and very meticulous. She actually gets it right. The only problem is that it is very difficult for the Japanese to pronounce European languages- so her Italian is very good but sometimes quite incomprehensible. But it is worth trying to unpick it, because once her sentences are understood they are not only formed with crystalline grammatical precision, they are also extremely interesting in their own right. This is what she said the other morning (In Italian of course):

‘If the Sienese had won the Battle of Marciano in 1554, I think that the centre of the Renaissance would have been situated in Siena rather than in Florence’

(Compiti: if you know any Italian, you just try and write that in grammatically correct manner, and put your answer in the comments below without cheating, please!)

                                      

There is always something interesting happening here- and it is concentrated on the lovely Piazza del Campo. Just take this morning:  I wanted to pop out for a Sunday paper and a coffee, but ran into several hundred cyclists who were doing a tour called the Eroica- a pleasure ride around the Chianti countryside, which runs through Siena too.

And I am just about to go back there again in a minute for something really quite ambitious which starts in a little while- It is a Dante Marathon, part of the 700-year celebration of Dante which just keeps going.  I understand it will be a simultaneous reading of the Divina Commedia by something like a hundred  Sienese people in various parts of town who will read one canto each. It will start in the Piazza del Campo with everyone present, reading the first Canto of Inferno at 15.30. The rest of the Inferno will then be read at the appointed places – one Canto takes about ten minutes to read.  At 16.30 the Purgatorio will start, and at 17.00 the Paradiso. At 18.30 all the participants meet up once more in the Piazza del Campo where they will all read together the final Canto of the Paradiso. 

                          This sounds pretty good- will be off in a minute and will report back!

(and just have to pop this in too...it is the tights the little Oca (the Goose) contrada boys were wearing yesterday at the competition.. troppo carino...)

A few hours later:

well it was all rather splendido:  I met up with Satomi again and we followed the  readings around town- we chose the 13th Canto of the Inferno ( the tree suicides), beautifully read next to the Chigiana Music Academy below, because Canto 5 was over subscribed: the unfortunate Francesca and Paolo got star billing and their canto was read inside  the Palazzo Pubblico, but  because of Covid not many people were allowed in...

 and for the Purgatorio  we were regaled by a splendid  reading - or enactment rather, of Canto XI, by a local maths teacher who knew it all by heart and declamed it with a passion that actually brought tears to my eyes...This is the Canto concerning a Sienese nobleman  Provenzano Salvan, born in the building behind him. He is being purged of the sin of Pride- one that Dante himself might have been most prone to..?

Finally, all these readers congregated at the Campo and here they are, a hundred or so strong, all reading the final Canto of Paradiso: