Side trip to Siena

Today we took a relaxing side trip to Siena. Florence's medieval arch-rival, Siena is less crowded with tourists and less hurried than Florence, which made for a nice change of pace.

We arrived around noon, got settled in our hotel right off of Piazza Il Campo, and went in search of lunch. We found a pizzeria with an address not to far from the hotel and set out to find it. What Apple maps failed to reveal was the elevation; the pizzeria was close as the crow flies, but required a hike down one hill and then up another. Siena is one of Tuscany's "hill towns" and it definitely deserves that designation being situated a top three hills. Having worked up a good appetite after our hike, we enjoyed delicious pizza and a stunning view.

Heading back toward the old center of town, we decided to visit Santa Maria Della Scala. For centuries this building located across from the Duomo served as a hospital, foundling home, and pilgrim lodge. It now serves as a museum, which is much larger than it appears, stretching multiple levels into the basement. There are a couple highlights of the collection, one of which being the frescos in Pellegrinaio Hall depicting medieval Siena's health care and welfare system. Another is Jacopo Della Quercia's 15th-century Fountain of Joy, which had badly deteriorated by the 19th century and is now dismantled and displayed in the museum along side plaster casts that were used to create a replica for Piazza Il Campo.

 We also viewed their exhibit of Byzantine reliquaries, said to have belonged to Helen, Contantine's mother, and the vaults of the Archaeological Museum full of Etruscan artifacts displayed in a labyrinth of vaults two stories underground where the Sienese sought refuge during WWII bombing.

We then visited the Civic Museum at Siena's City Hall, where secular government began in the early Renaissance. The halls are filled with interesting frescoes and portraits, but I was particularly interested to find the Allegory of Good and Bad Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, a work that represented the political ideals of the Council of Nine. The town depicted in the Effects of Good Government is Siena as Lorenzetti viewed it through a window of the City Hall.

They sky was beginning to look a bit ominous as we headed to the Duomo, a great example of the Romanesque-Gothic style in Italy. This church also offered a rooftop tour and since we had enjoyed this so much at the Duomo in Milan we decided to purchase the combo ticket that included the tour. Our tour was scheduled at 5:00pm, but a pretty good rain started to fall around 4:00pm so we headed inside the Duomo to view the interior from the ground level. Here also I had an interest in viewing a particular work of art: the Pulpit by Nicola Pisano with panels by his son Giovanni Pisano from 1268. The use of classical forms and realism mixed in with decorative Gothic lines signaled the coming Renaissance. Sadly, the pulpit was undergoing conservation and was covered up. However, there were windows in the covering and we were actually able to see a conservator working on the pulpit, which was pretty neat.

As we were killing time in the bookshop the thunderstorm outside was growing worse. After a particularly loud clap of thunder all the lights in the building dimmed and stayed dimmed. We never quite figured out if the building had been hit by lightning. We wondered if they would cancel the tour of the roof after that. Nope. And so we went outside on the roof. In a thunderstorm. Thankfully the worst of it had already passed over the building by that time, and I saw quite a few lightning rods on the surrounding buildings so I figured we'd be OK...

We made it back down from the roof alive and decided just to take a relaxing stroll around the shops in Siena. We grabbed some fast-food pasta as a quick dinner, and once the rain had stopped we found a table at a cafe on Piazza Il Campo where we had a coffee, some traditional Sienese desserts (Ricciarelli and Panforte e Panpepato), and watched the world go by.