Roads and stardust.

One summer my parents decided to take my little brother and me on a trip around Tuscany, and we stopped at Siena. I had known Siena, of course, watched the Palio, but I had never walked inside its walls. I’m from Piedmont, and I belong with the Alps, but there’s a special place in my heart for the small cities of the Tuscan hills, their cobblestones and palazzi, probably because I love period drama and I’m a history nerd extraordinaire with a passion for princes and plots. So I found myself walking around the incredibly crowded narrow streets of Siena, dribbling German tourists and avoiding children handling cones of gelato like swords.

Piazza del Campo was a wonder I wasn’t ready for. It was July, and there was no the reddish terra di Siena on the ground, but I could almost feel it, the hooves of the horses and the whips of the jockeys, the screams of joy and despair of the contradaioli, until we raised our heads and saw clouds gathering. A blink of an eye later, it was raining, heavy drops that soak you through and are a general annoyance to every tourist ever. We ran back to the yard of the Potestà, the Entrone where the horses wait on the day of the race.

We weren’t the only ones, and the yard was filling with people all huddled around the walls, because, you see, the Entrone is built very much like a chiostro in a monastery, it has a hole in the middle. Rain was pouring down from there, and the wind was blowing more water through the doors. My Converses were soaked through, and yet it was beautiful. The piazza had turned grey, the world outside of the doors seemed painting-like. With no one around to wear modern clothes you could almost imagine to be glimpsing back in the 15th century. I took a picture of a little girl looking out. She looks like an astronaut stepping on an alien world for the first time, and whenever I spot it again on my Instagram I still feel the eeriness of that moment, the quiet, where nothing but the sound of the rain to disturbed the stillness of the world. It felt like a spell.

And yet it was nothing more than a summer rain, as quickly gone as it had come, and soon the tourists were running out again, the piazza exploded with families and groups shooting pictures at everything that looked even remotely antique. I stood there in the Entrone a second longer, my mum calling at me, but I lingered on, breathing in the fading scent of the rain, and lost centuries that had brushed my fingertips, even if just for a second.