Siena in Palio Week: Ferragosto, Closures and What Still Opens

Why 13–16 August is an awkward week

Two things collide in Siena in mid-August, and most guides cover only one of them.

Ferragosto falls on 15 August. It is Italy’s biggest summer public holiday, the day much of the country stops and goes to the coast. Shops shut, opening hours contract, and services run reduced timetables.

The Palio dell’Assunta is run on 16 August, with its four-day programme starting on the 13th. The city fills, the centre is progressively closed to traffic and then to movement, and the institutions around Piazza del Campo change their hours.

So the 15th is a national holiday and the 16th is the busiest day of the Sienese year, back to back. If you are in Siena that week without knowing this, you will find a beautiful city in which quite a lot is unexpectedly shut.

In 2026 the calendar makes it worse, and this is the detail to plan around. The four days fall Thursday to Sunday: the *tratta* on Thursday 13th, trials on Friday 14th, Ferragosto on Saturday 15th, and the race on Sunday 16th.

That means the holiday and the weekend stack. Saturday is a national holiday, Sunday is both race day and a Sunday — so shops, offices and transport are reduced two days running, and Sunday is thinner again than Saturday. Friday 14 August is your last ordinary day for a supermarket run, a pharmacy, a bank, or anything else that assumes a working week.

A lane in the Contrada del Drago. In Palio week the contrade walk their horses through streets like this one, and the crowds follow.

Museum hours, checked against the museums

These are the hours each institution publishes on its own site, checked on 26 July 2026. Note what is missing as much as what is there.

Santa Maria della Scala is the useful case: it publishes its Palio-day hours openly, and also cuts to 10:00–17:00 for the 2 July race. That is a museum directly on Piazza del Duomo telling you it will be closed by late afternoon on race day.

The Museo Civico and Torre del Mangia are inside Palazzo Pubblico — the building the race finishes in front of. Their published pages carry no Palio-day exception, but they sit on the track. Absence of a published closure is not a guarantee of normal opening, so confirm directly if the 16th is your only chance to climb the tower.

Ticket prices at the time of checking: Santa Maria della Scala €9.00 full, or €8.00 with reservation. Museo Civico €10.00 full, or €11.00 booked ahead. Torre del Mangia €10.00.

What Ferragosto actually closes

This is where most articles about Ferragosto guess, so here is the honest division.

What we can tell you with confidence: 15 August is a national public holiday. Public offices close. Many independent shops and family-run businesses close, some for the surrounding week or longer. Reduced service is normal across the board.

What we cannot tell you from a published source: whether a specific supermarket, restaurant or bakery in Siena will open on the 15th, and for how long. None of that is published centrally, it varies business by business, and it changes year to year. Anyone giving you a confident list has assembled it from guesswork.

What to do about it instead:

• Buy anything you actually need on 14 August. Water, breakfast, medicines, baby supplies. This single step removes most of the problem.
• Book dinner for the 15th in advance, and confirm the restaurant is open that evening when you book rather than assuming.
• If you are self-catering, do not plan a supermarket run on the 15th or the 16th.
• Churches keep services on 15 August — it is the feast of the Assumption, which is the reason both the holiday and the following day’s race exist.

Getting in and out

There is no published "Ferragosto timetable", and looking for one is the wrong search. What exists is better, and it answers the question properly once you know how Italian bus timetables are built.

Autolinee Toscane's own timetable for the 131R, the Siena–Poggibonsi–Florence line, sorts every departure into one of three categories: Feriale, Feriale escluso Sabato — weekdays excluding Saturday — and Festivo. The current summer timetable is marked *Valido dal 27.07.2026*, so it is the one in force for the whole Palio week.

Apply the 2026 calendar to those categories and the week resolves:

That is the part almost every guide misses. The Saturday reduction is not a Ferragosto special measure — it is the ordinary Saturday timetable, and it applies every week of the year. Ferragosto sits on top of it. Then race day is a Sunday, which is *Festivo*, thinner again.

What we still cannot tell you: whether the operator additionally treats 15 August as *Festivo* rather than as a Saturday. That is not stated on the pages or in the PDF we read, and the two would give different departures. Download the 131R timetable from Autolinee Toscane and read the category column against your own date before you commit to a departure.

Two things are worth planning around regardless of the timetable:

• Arrive before the 16th, not on it. The centre progressively closes as the day goes on, and dragging luggage toward Piazza del Campo on race afternoon is not a plan.
• Do not book onward travel for the morning after. Between the celebrations that run late into the night and the possibility of the race itself being postponed by weather, an early departure on the 17th is the tightest booking you could make.

If you are driving, the restricted traffic zone is enforced by camera year-round and the restrictions expand around the race. Confirm the exact approach and parking with your accommodation rather than following a map app into a fine.

So is this week worth it?

If you want the Palio, this is the week, and the closures are simply the price. Plan the 15th as a light day — the trials, the contrade walking their horses, a booked dinner — rather than the day you had earmarked for museums.

If you want Siena, this is the week to avoid. You will pay the most for a room, see the least of the city, and spend the 15th finding things shut. The same trip in late September costs less and gives you the cathedral, the museums and the streets without the crowd.

Orto de' Pecci, in the valley below the walls. On a week when the centre is full and much of it is shut, the green space just outside it is the part nobody queues for.

*Museum hours and prices above were checked against Santa Maria della Scala's and the Museo Civico's own websites on 26 July 2026. Bus timetable categories and the 27 July 2026 validity date come from Autolinee Toscane's own published timetable for line 131R, read on 28 July 2026. Weekday dates were computed from the 2026 calendar, not carried over from a previous year. Where a source publishes nothing, this guide says so rather than filling the gap.*