Il Palio: two days that reprice Siena for a year

Twice a year Siena stops being a hill town and becomes a closed system. The 2nd of July and the 16th of August are not 'event dates'. They are the two days the contrade still run the city, and every serious house within the walls has already sold the rooms that look onto the pageant — or has decided, on purpose, not to.

The fourfold rate is real, and it is not greed in the vulgar sense. A palazzo with eight keys and a view of the Campo has one product that exists twice a year. The rest of the calendar is a different hotel. Treating those two nights as the same room sold at a 'seasonal supplement' is how operators train guests to feel cheated. The honest houses publish the Palio tariff in January and stop answering the telephone in June.

Three houses that do not move the number

We keep three Sienese houses on the register whose Palio rate is the same as their September rate. They are not saints. They are properties whose rooms do not see the race, whose courtyards face inward, and whose owners have decided that a doubled tariff for a worse night's sleep is a poor piece of arithmetic. They fill anyway, with people who came for Siena and will tolerate the Palio.

The Palio is not a spectacle you attend. It is a civic machine you have to stand next to.

If you want the window, you are not booking a hotel. You are buying a seat. Say that plainly to yourself before you write the enquiry. The Preferred Partner desk can still add breakfast and a car from Florence — it cannot invent a view that was sold to a contrada family in March.