Photo credits: Alessandro Imbriaco, #PlacesthatMatter 2017
When you say Siena, you say Palio. And no one can blame us if we only like to speak of the Palio among ourselves. If you were not born here, in one of our city’s seventeen contrade, you cannot understand the hate or the love. And you cannot understand that for us, taking a long trip, going abroad, can mean just going to Florence.
We love our piazza, the fabulous Piazza del Campo. We love our Duomo, one of the greatest examples of Italian Romanesque/Gothic, with its extraordinary “Gate of Heaven”, recalling the ladder Jacob used in his dream to climb to the heavens. We have always thought big. Just between us, but big — even when we make freezers and refrigerators.
Photo credits: Alessandro Imbriaco, #PlacesthatMatter 2017
We were born in 1967, the year Tartuca won the Palio on 2 July and Selva won the Assumption Palio on 16 August. We started out as Ignis and then in 1991 we became Whirlpool.
Photo credits: Alessandro Imbriaco, #PlacesthatMatter 2017
One day a few years ago, in a difficult moment of our history, a female top executive had the fantastic idea of bringing Siena into our plant. Pure pride! At the entrance, the coats-of-arms of the contrade, on parade, as if the factory had become the piazza — even better, the “mossa” when the horses line up for the start of the Palio. Then came the silhouette of the city and finally, the doors to the historic centre, from Porta di Camollia to Porta Tufi, framing the spaces where products come out along the production line.
Photo credits: Alessandro Imbriaco, #PlacesthatMatter 2017
And while we are on the subject of products, there is one we all root for, no matter which contrada we are from, and that is the new Iconic refrigerator. When you say KitchenAid, you say Siena.