This story, published to coincide with the first Palio di Siena of summer 2025, is excerpted from the third issue of the London-based interiors magazine Scenery—available now at scenery-ltd.com.

The rules of the Palio di Siena are as mystifying as they are ancient. The breakneck, 90-second bareback race has taken place every summer in the Tuscan city’s Piazza del Campo since the 15th century. Held twice a year, it is contested by ten of the city’s seventeen contrade, or districts, each one fighting not for individual glory, but for the honor of its neighborhood. Riders are expected to endure violent jostling mid-race—elbowing, whipping, even attempts to unseat opponents—all of it sanctioned by centuries of unwritten codes. Many of the bitterest rivalries have lasted for generations.

For the 27-year-old horse racer Selvaggia Pianetti Lotteringhi della Stufa—who grew up not far from Siena, at Castello del Calcione, the medieval castle in southern Tuscany where her family has lived since the 1400s—riding has been a lifelong obsession. “My mother rode while she was pregnant with me,” she says. “So I’ve been bouncing on the back of a horse since I was in the womb.” She grew up showing and jumping, but the regimented world of traditional equestrian sport never appealed—the risk and thrill of the Palio were more enticing. “I thought, my god, that would be a lot of fun to try,” she admits. “But I had no idea what I was getting into.”