Siena

The place I remember most clearly and with most affection from my 1969 student trip to Italy, was Siena. I can’t remember anything very specific, just the Piazza del Campo and the music floating out of windows as one walked past, the men in medieval costume practising their banner twirling and throwing  and catching, and the gloriousness of it. I didn’t want to leave. Phil found that there is a bus from Florence to Siena, about once an hour, which takes about seventy five minutes. So today, off we went.

It was quite interesting to see the countryside, as it’s still really green. There are a lot less wild flowers and blossom than in Britain. Hurrah for Natural England.  Mind you, there are less flowers in gardens than in Britain. Perhaps the Italians are less keen on them. You needed to stare out at the countryside, as it is one of those old autostradas, built for Fiat Cinquecentos, with narrow lanes and tight corners, so the lorries just can’t keep in lane. I remember driving one around Genoa, and my blood pressure and heart rate going through the roof.

Siena, from the loggia of the Palazzo Communale

Siena is just as gorgeous as I remembered. Phil remembered the Duomo – I could only remember the green and white marble stripes, nothing about the inside. There’s a great chunk of building, less than half finished, where the Sienese started to build an enormous extension to the church. The building was halted by the Black Death, which killed two thirds of the inhabitants, and was never resumed. Mind you, the cathedral is large enough. A Sienese Pope, Pius II, left his books to the cathedral, and just off the nave is his library. It’s beautiful. There are superb frescos and ceiling, and lots of early antiphonals on display.

Ceiling of the library

 Pius II lived in the mid fourteenth century, but it’s all in the brightest, clearest colours and superb condition.  It’s been open since 1999, so neither of us had seen it and it was worth the trip almost by itself.

The cathedral museum has an arresting reliquary, with a skull grinning out of a crystal case, and bones bundled together with elaborate silk ribbons,  like some sort of macabre gift wrapping. If you visit Siena you mustn't miss that.  

We toured the Palazzo Communale. Siena lost to Florence (Hawkwood was involved, naturally) and development sort of stopped. So the Palazzo Communale was built at the end of the thirteenth century and looks untouched. Inside, the Chapel was completed at the very beginning of the fifteenth century, and has kept the same furnishings, including stunning choir stalls decorated with marquetry, the original hanging lamp, candlesticks and so forth. Phil wanted to take the whole chapel home. I don’t know if that is permitted in the rules of the game, but it’s such a perfect whole that you couldn’t have a bit of it. I chose an exquisite piece of goldsmith’s work – a golden rose bush, given to the city by Pius II.

We loved the Room of the Nine (the council of nine who governed Siena), and spent ages examining the wall paintings of the Allegories of Good Government and Bad Government.   

So then we just sat in Il Campo. We had a coffee at a pavement café, and then decided we really ought to have an ice cream. I chose a scoop each of dark chocolate, coffee and hazelnut. I actually think having three scoops was being greedy, and two would have been enough, because I was really full, but I wouldn’t be able to decide which flavour I could do without.

Piazza del Campo

It was so wonderful to return, and not be disappointed, but more in love with the place than ever.