Piazza del Campo is the civic and dramatic center of Siena in the account: a place where the Palio brings the city’s people together, and where that shared public space fails to protect Giacomo Matteotti and Velia Matteotti from a political attack. The contrast between the race’s popular spectacle and the couple’s forced departure gives the square its decisive narrative significance.

Setting and the Palio

The square hosts a race described as a longstanding part of Sienese life. Since 1644, twelve Maremma horses, mounted bareback, have made three laps around Piazza del Campo in barely three minutes. The route includes the sharp turn at San Martino, where the horses’ speed and the tightly packed crowd make the race a moment of danger as well as excitement.

The city is divided into seventeen contrade, or wards, whose banners and medieval-costumed representatives appear in the procession before the race. The Palio concentrates that civic identity into a short, feverish contest: a few moments of jubilation set against the long routine of ordinary life. The square is not merely a backdrop for an event; it is where the city’s competing neighborhoods and its gathered population become visible together.

A public square divided by class

The narrative distinguishes sharply between the spectators above and the people in the square. Industrialists, magnates, and agrarians can watch from sheltered stands or surrounding balconies, while the crowd below is exposed to the sun, pressed close together, and hemmed in by the horses. The upper classes may dominate public life, but the scene places the bodily cost and intensity of the spectacle among the people themselves.

That arrangement makes Piazza del Campo a measure of popular presence as well as a place of entertainment. The elite occupy elevated positions, yet the square’s central mass of spectators supplies the Palio’s force and atmosphere. This tension frames Matteotti’s brief presence there: the crowd can envelop and conceal him, but its size and disorder also allow violence to unfold amid public celebration.

Matteotti’s visit and expulsion

On July 2, 1923, Giacomo and Velia Matteotti arrive arm in arm and join the stream of people gathering for the Palio. Their visit is a rare diversion for the couple. They watch the procession from the area beneath the Loggia della Mercanzia as the contrade’s banners and costumed participants pass and preparations begin for the horses to enter the square.

Matteotti is recognized and called out as an outlaw. Men wearing the bright colors of a contrada surround the couple; Velia clings to her husband, who shields her. The account places the assault amid the ordinary disorder of rival supporters, until the presence of a woman draws attention to what is happening. A police car pushes through the crowd, and the police take the couple to the station so that the race can proceed.

Their removal turns the square’s festive gathering into a scene of exclusion. The couple are expelled from the city while the noise of Piazza del Campo rises over the surrounding hills. Matteotti records the incident tersely that evening: he and his family were attacked and forced to leave Siena, while the police looked on helplessly. The race and its public celebration continue; the political victim is the one made to disappear from the scene.

Narrative significance

Piazza del Campo holds together two sharply different forms of collective life. The Palio gathers the people into an exuberant civic spectacle, but that gathering does not guarantee safety or equal belonging. In Matteotti’s case, the crowd that had seemed capable of enfolding and protecting him becomes the setting from which he is removed.

The square therefore gives physical form to the account’s contrast between popular presence and political power. Its central crowd is the acknowledged star of the Palio, while the authorities and privileged spectators occupy positions apart from it; yet when Matteotti is attacked, public visibility does not prevent his expulsion. The square’s celebration resumes, leaving the incident as a stark interruption within the city’s ritual life.