The 91st Csio of Piazza di Siena-Master D’Inzeo was presented today, among art, restorations, commitment to biodiversity to the rhythm of the sporting exploits of horses and athletes engaged in the most beautiful competition in the world. Piazza di Siena – one of the prominent sporting (and glamorous) events in the busy agenda of major international events in the Capital – returns to illuminate the planetary fresco of equestrian sports with the 91st edition of the official international horse show of Rome – Master d’Inzeo , scheduled on the historic Oval of Villa Borghese from 22 to 26 May. The first day – Wednesday 22nd – serves as the overture to the four highly anticipated days of competition, which the public will be able to attend for free, as per tradition in the latest editions of the Competition. The sports program will, as always, be of the highest level and will develop between the historic square with the most admired green oval in the world and the Galoppatoio facility, redeveloped and reinterpreted not only from a sporting point of view thanks to the Fise e Sport project and Health.
At Villa Borghese they think big, and the presentation of the 2024 edition is the opportunity to raise the bar even further on an event that has become central in the international calendar of equestrian sports, but above all in that of Roman sport. Sport, but also sustainability and promotion of an iconic place. “Today the 91st Csio and tomorrow something more ambitious, which allows Villa Borghese to have daily management, a participatory foundation that could be an excellence in the world”. With the Government “ready to offer collaboration, in the hope that this dream can be consecrated. Mayor Gualtieri, to whom I spoke a couple of years ago – said the Minister for Sport and Youth Andrea Abodi -, already has a positive interest in the project”.
But the Piazza di Siena Horse Competition is not just a major sporting event or, as they say, the ‘Wimbledon of equestrian sports’. It’s much more. It is a virtuous and symbiotic model in which the event itself and the place that hosts it, Villa Borghese, benefit from each other. What makes it tangible is the commitment of Sport and Salute in the annual maintenance work of the area – understood as horizontal greenery, interventions in some specific areas and on some building works – and in what has been carried out from 2018 to today by the organizers Fise and Sport and Health ranging between art, culture, biodiversity, social, environmental and climate awareness. All through direct or symbolic actions aimed at exploiting the powerful amplification of major sporting events.
A team effort, therefore, to take care of Villa Borghese, before, during and after the event. “Something that makes us proud”, underlines the President of Sport and Health, Marco Mezzaroma. Over the years, the appeal of Piazza di Siena in Italy and abroad has gradually increased: “The adventure began with many prejudices on the part of various institutions – added the President of CONI, Giovanni Malagò -. It was believed that this place could lose its beauty and historical connotation. Facts and years have shown how everyone has benefited from it.” There is historicity, but there is obviously also sporting competition, two months before the Olympic event. “For this reason – says Malagò -, Piazza di Siena will be an opportunity to verify the state of the art of Italian horse riding”. Between the Oval and the Galloppatoio of Villa Borghese – where the Roman stage of the Italia Polo Challenge will also take place – there will be the present (with riders and riders from all over the world), but also the future of horse riding, “to offer a complete vision of the horse – as explained by the President of Fise, Marco Di Paola -, which only in Italy is recognized as an athlete within the legal system”.
The Oval of Villa Borghese, of a shining green colour, can only recall another very famous green in the world of sport, that of the All England Club. “Piazza di Siena is a bit like the Wimbledon of equestrian sports, in terms of beauty, complexity and for the presence of many athletes – the words of the Sports Councilor of the Municipality of Rome, Alessandro Onorato -. And it is the emblem of how everyone’s collaboration leads to the enjoyment of a good that until recently was not as we see it today. And the interventions will continue.” Thanks to Roma Capitale, but also thanks to the Lazio Region, as assured by the Councilor for Tourism, Environment and Sport, Elena Palazzo: “With the contribution of the institutions we are starting to do teamwork, and this is not something to be taken for granted. But I like to underline the beauty of all this: a zero impact event, which has the characteristic of being immersed in the utmost respect for an iconic place like Villa Borghese”. Piazza di Siena will also be “a model of sporting sustainability”, as underlined by the Undersecretary for the Environment and Energy Security, Claudio Barbaro, but also the opportunity to launch – among others – a project between Fise and the Ministry of agriculture, food sovereignty and forests for the recovery of horses at the end of their career, as announced General Director of the General Directorate for Masaf horse racing Remo Chiodi. So that no one is left behind.
For the occasion, the historic Oval on which the Horse Racing Competition is held was enlarged: brought back to its origins with the restoration of the turf in place of silica sand in 2018, it was recently expanded with 4 thousand meters of green carpet, an operation that represents a strong message not only from a bioarchitectural point of view. The definitive removal of the fence surrounding the Oval – by virtue of the green light from the relevant institutions – aims to be a message towards inclusion and the demolition of every social, cultural, psychological and divisive barrier. A further metaphor that finds its natural symbolism in equestrian sports, where jumping an obstacle – and therefore a barrier – is a crucial action towards sporting results.
The commitment to biodiversity and the protection of the planet’s natural lung in a city like Rome – the Capital has no equal in the world, not only for historical-archaeological, landscape and architectural beauties but also for the extension and variety of greenery, which represents 67% of the municipal territory by virtue of 85 thousand hectares out of the 129 thousand total – for the 2024 edition of the Piazza di Siena Competition it was directed towards the conservative and improvement action of the Valle dei Platani, where the eleven trees of the 17th century romantically defined ‘Sentinels of Eternity’ of Rome, and the younger ones were subjected to ‘lightening’ work to ensure light and correct vital functions. All this, also thanks to a new fence, effective information signs and an ad hoc irrigation system.
Piazza di Siena is also a ‘museum ship’ that opens to major art exhibitions in the museums of Villa Borghese and a restoration ‘laboratory’ that is renewed every year. For the first time the Pietro Canonica Museum, located right in front of the Casino dell’Orologio, hosts the exhibition curated by Sandro Santolini ‘This is Aquilino son of the wind’ from 22 May to 15 September 2024, in which the portraits of the horses will be exhibited Rospigliosi from the Capitoline collections, composed of a series of canvases by the German painter Johan Reder, to which is added a painting by Paolo Monaldi, which portray the famous horses of Camillo Rospigliosi. An exhibition promoted by Roma Capitale – Capitoline Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, in collaboration with FISE and Sport and Health and Museum Services of Zètema Progetto Cultura.
The Piazza di Siena Competition will also be home to a sculptural relief – ‘The Knight’s Relief’ – from the first half of the 2nd century AD which will be exhibited in the Casino dell’Orologio. It is a work that belongs to the seventeenth-century nucleus of the Borghese Collection, reassembled and cleaned specifically for the occasion thanks to the collaboration between Roma Capitale – Capitoline Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, Fise and Sport and Health, and represents a young knight with armor scales and boots decorated by Leontè, who holds the reins of a horse with his right hand, depicted only from the front, in profile and in the act of moving forward. The head, facing the horse, although ancient, originally belonged to another sculptural work. The type of armor, the very valuable armor of the horse, the remains of the mysterious knight allow us to hypothesize how we are faced with a figure of the highest rank, fueling the mystery about his identity, up to the most suggestive hypothesis according to which it could be a a prominent imperial figure of the Trajanic-Hadrian era.
If the light on the roofs of Rome is unique in the world, even more so is the light that illuminates Piazza di Siena. A natural light which, filtering through the centuries-old trees and caressing artistic and architectural works, makes the Piazza di Siena Competition a unique piece of world sport. And that light contributes to the illusion of time slowing down and going back, in a backward journey that takes us back to the atmosphere of the 1920s when it all began, with a glance that the organizers of the Competition wanted to recreate from the point of design architecture.
And great classical music could not be missing on the opening day, with the great concert by the orchestra conducted by Maestro Alvise Casellati organized by Intesa Sanpaolo which, although private, will be free – following the philosophy of the Piazza di Siena model – for those who will want to enjoy it from the steps of the ancient stands of the Oval, restored while the project is pending thanks to the Competition. As always, the Piazza di Siena Competition will be visible for free for all those who want, from the ancient stands and from various ‘green’ areas around the Oval. On the key day of the Piazza di Siena Competition, in the late afternoon and at the end of the races, the thermometer of emotion will rise again thanks to the spectacular Carousels on horseback by the IV Carabinieri Regiment, the Lancers of Montebello and the boys of San Raffaele Viterbo.
