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Siena The only good part about getting from Vernazza to Siena, besides arriving and finding we had a nice, convenient room, was seeing the top of the Leaning Tower as we rode through Pisa. Been there, seen that!

Il Campo (the field) is the touristic center of Siena, and we had to drag our "bad dogs" across its bumpy brick expanse to our accommodations. I noticed right away that the, um, erection on the city hall didn't fit into any known photographic frame; I had to take special measures to get it all into the picture here.

snapshot alley above il Campo

Let's just say that the city fathers wanted us to think of Siena as a well-endowed city when they erected it. And it's still working, six centuries later! Watch with us -- best viewpoint is the gelato shop just above the festivities -- as newcomers predictably line up at the top of this alley above il Campo, take their snapshots, then walk down to congregate, ooh! and aah! in any number of languages. The guy in the picture is undoubtedly trying to figure out why I've got my camera pointing in the wrong direction.

After the campanile and the hoardes of daytrippers, the next thing I noticed is that, except for il Campo, there's no space in Siena for backing up and taking a picture of the big buildings: they loom over tiny public squares. This is the best I could do for Siena's impressive Duomo. I backed into the furthest corner of its postage stamp square, climbed up on an abutment, and held my camera over my head ...and the Duomo still looms.

Siena's Cathedral

Duomo bell tower

Compressing perspective and forcing groundlings to look up is intentional. We can be sure of this because (1) hilltop real estate is precious, and (2) the architecture does everything it can to emphasize the effect. Here's an analytical view of the Cathedral's bell tower. We note the stripes immediately, but note also how there are more of them the higher you look, exaggerating the perspective. The curly brackets are of equal length, but notice how your eye makes the upper one look shorter. Now why do you suppose these clever manipulators would want their buildings to look even taller than they really are? Another pleasing detail: the counter-modulation of the bell tower archways, from zero pillars at the bottom to five at the top.

Almost too high to be appreciated, the western facade of the Duomo is richly decorated with 15th Century mosaic. Only the birds really get to appreciate this work. Siena's is a magnificent example of a congregation of the finest assembling -- why? to create together a masterpiece. The Cathedral was designed and decorated by an unprecedented gathering of the world's best sculptors, artists, and also stone carvers and builders. We walked inside the Cathedral -- to pray, of course, for a safe trip and good weather, thereby avoiding the need to pay a tourist fee. We knew they'd get us anyhow ...and eventually they did. Workmen were covering up most of the magnificent mosaic floor for "protection" but important bits were roped off and left exposed.	the Cathedral facade, detail
Cathedral floor detail	As this Cathedral was being built, Siena was at the peak of its power as a city, an equal of Italy's most powerful. It considered other important players -- Perugia and Roma in this image -- as coequal if possibly not on an intellectual par. The city was proud and powerful, but its builders and thinkers accomplished greatness and wove an ecumenical fabric that drew all Italy together as a nation.
Alas, the flowering, though spectacular, was brief. The Medici of Firenze, then in ruthless ascendance, took powerful exception to Siena's glory, made war on them, and snuffed their candle out by outlawing building, expropriating wealth, and building a fortress and quartering an army in town to keep the Sienese upstarts down. The Medici stopped short of destroying these magnificent buildings, and so Siena's short-lived glory is frozen in time while Firenze has become a modern city. Siena stopped at the right time... In the Duomo I stood wondering how it would feel to worship with all these frozen-in-time churchmen glaring stonily down upon me.	Cathedral frieze: "famous bishops we have known"

postcard view of the Cathedral floor

We have visited richer cathedrals -- the one in Sevilla comes to mind -- but none as pleasingly put together as this one. All the details are in harmony, and despite the throngs, a hushed reverence prevails. the Cathedral dome

The list of the Cathedral's builders is an honor role of brilliant early Renaissance artists, and everywhere one looks, more beauty beckons. Siena's Duomo is its centerpiece; clustered around it, more treasures called to us, but we'd had enough for one day. After figuring out how to proceed, we vowed to continue our explorations the next day, and left the Cathedral in favor of tea lattes at a sidewalk café below the Baptistry.

Duccio di Buoninsegna's choir window

Siena's glory is seen in small strokes as well as big ones. Two bronze snakes demarcate the ceremonial entry to il Campo. Iron flag-standards and torch-holders affixed high above the street, and huge iron rings at eye-level for tethering horses -- rings that have been in service for so long the stones have been eroded by winter winds blowing the rings. Sadly, human mindlessness also marks Siena with disrespectful touches. Thanks for sharing your butts, buttheads! Do you think they biodegrade? Or do you even think?

After breakfast in il Campo, we headed uphill to the Duomo square, where the Museo dell'Opera occupies what was meant to be the aisle of a second Duomo nave interrupted by the jealous Medicis. Along with a spectacular collection of religious art, this museum also serves as the stairway to a spectacular view from the top of the wall out over Siena's rooftops.

Duomo's unfinished nave and viewpoint

rooftops and il Campo from atop the nave wall

From above, Siena's extraordinary homogeneity shows in the heaving ocean of red tile roofs extending outward any way you look. Looking eastward, il Campo interrupts this sea. Siena is built along the flat ridge-tops radiating out from the Duomo; the ravines were left for gardening and nature, so branches of green pierce almost to the heart of the city.

The statues in the museum's hall used to adorn various churches in Siena, but have been brought indoors to save them from the corrosion brought about by agricultural burning and automobiles. In the photograph above, the persistent haze that obscures the distance tells this story better than I can. The OPA collection seems to consist of a large collection of Madonnas and Saints -- a gentle collection, focusing more on the glory and without the Louvre's hacked off heads. A small collection of Siena's artistic wonders is assembled for your pleasure in the Siena wing of the Sabbatical Art Gallery.

postcard view of the statuary hall

golden light in a gallery

The rooms of this gallery are as richly finished and worthy as the art displayed here, and impressed me more. The thoughtful use of light, and the quality of Siena's light itself, suffuses the rooms with an almost liquid brilliance. In light like this, everything looks good. Amazingly, it IS good. Treasure after treasure greets the eye. This is a small museum, displaying perhaps a hundred works in ten rooms, but it is uncrowded, thoughtfully provided with benches in front of the more important works. It could be better labeled -- there is very little naming or attribution. But since it's all for the Greater Glory, personal ownership matters no more now than it did to the largely anonymous Sienese school that created it.

This masterpiece is so realistic that the pillow looks soft and the child looks alive. anonymous marble sculpture Look up! How many modern galleries invite you to admire their ceilings as much as what hangs on their walls?

painted gallery ceiling

Libreria Piccolomini ceiling

Baptistry ceiling

I hope you haven't gotten a stiff neck from craning at all these ceilings. There are just too many riches to take in and remember: a surfeit. We each look back at different bits warmly. Rochelle was very taken by the graceful Ghiberti and Donatello bronzes around the font in the Baptistry beneath the Duomo. I could have spent hours in the Piccolomini Library just off the Duomo's nave, staring at the marvelous storytelling of the life of Siena's favorite son who grew up to be Pope Pius III -- here he's setting off to attend the Conference at Basle where an important schism was resolved and where he met Frédéric III. There's more Libreria Piccolomini in the Siena wing.

Enea Piccolomini departs for Basle

the Orto Botanica

Despite the best Medici efforts, Siena has remained a center of learning as well as wisdom. On a sunny afternoon, Rochelle and I walked down into one of the valleys that contains the University of Siena's ancient botanical garden dedicated to useful plants from all over the world. The garden may have seen better seasons and even better centuries, but it provided a serene place to spend some time away from the daytripping crowds.

Against a grape-leaf covered wall, autumnal colors confirmed the chill in the air, reminding us of tourism's two-edged sword. If the weather's good, the crowds are too big, and when the weather turns sour, it's best to be gone. Siena offered us many other small delights that don't lend themselves to photographic documentation. In the evening, after the daytrippers head back to Firenze, a peacefulness descends, the townsfolk come out and promenade through the narrow streets. They like to eat out, and there are plenty of places for them, and for those visitors who stay overnight. We enjoyed a renaissance dinner complete with "authentic cuisine", a jester and a musician. We visited the Synagogue. We ate panforte.

in the Orto: a reminder of autumn

flag twirling in il Campo

Late on our last afternoon in Siena, as we were packing, we heard drumming leading to the Campo. Following the sound, we found an unexpected display of young flag twirlers from Siena's seventeen neighborhoods. This practice, the costumes, and even the neighborhoods themselves are proud traditions from Siena's glory days, and it was a thrill to eat superb gelato while watching boys follow the time-honored ways under the eagle-eyed direction of the real twirlers, men in their twenties and thirties.

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