The story
Palio di Asti in Asti
Documented from 1275, when Asti ran a mocking Palio outside rival Alba's walls, Asti's bareback horse race is Italy's oldest recorded palio. Twenty-one rioni, borghi and outlying comuni compete around the track in Piazza Alfieri on the third Sunday of September, riding a pelo, without a saddle, for a hand-painted drappo banner.
Asti's Palio holds the documented record for Italy's oldest continuously run horse race: the chronicler Guglielmo Ventura recorded in 1275 that Asti staged a Palio beneath the walls of rival Alba specifically to humiliate its citizens after a military dispute, a custom the city then turned into its own annual tradition.