our February travel weekend took us to Siena, a sprawling medieval city draped over the Tuscan hills. we had quite the adventure getting there: there's no direct train from our local regional train station, so we needed to take three different trains. and we ended up missing our first train by thirty seconds -- we got to the platform one minute before the train was supposed to depart, hurried to get on board, and the doors slid shut and the train pulled away! then of course the next train traveling the same route departed so late that we would miss our connection. we had to purchase new tickets for a completely different route that arrived in Siena four hours later than originally planned. Italy wins, again! from now on we always make sure to arrive at the regional train station five minutes early!
arriving in Siena by train certainly has its advantages! the station lies adjacent to a shopping mall with a huge supermarket, so we were able to load up on snacks and sandwich fixings for dinner, load it all into the stroller, and then take a series of ten escalators up the side of the hill to reach the city proper. from there it was a thirty minute walk to our hotel with Cecilia singing away in the Ergo on my back and Greta snoring in the stroller. we checked into our hotel,
Il Chiostro del Carmine, which was amazing! we usually try to stay in Air BnBs or apartment units when we travel, but for this weekend trip, the hotel was perfect. after a gourmet dinner of ham and salami sandwiches with sour cream and onion Pringles, we finally got the girls settled down to sleep around 11 pm.
the next day, we awoke to find the city bathed in the lambent morning light. the view from the breakfast room was unbeatable! then we set off to explore the city. each of Siena's seventeen neighborhoods (known as
contrade) has its own color-coded animal symbol, and it was fun to keep an eye out for the little ceramic tiles marking each
contrada's territory. and even though we were visiting months before the summer Palio horse races, the city was still decorated with flags and placards honoring past winners. the main town square, Il Campo, is not a square at all, but actually a clamshell. the Palio races are held around this square, and it's easy to imagine people crammed onto the balconies around the square for a birds-eye view of the festivities!
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| breakfast with a view! |
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| the view from our room |
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super cute room! (i'm sure none of you will be surprised when i inform you that Nick is reading a tome on the liturgy.)
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| flags flying in the tartaruga (turtle) neighborhood |
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| arches and tunnels and cobblestones and wrought iron gates ... i just can't get enough |
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| the City Hall (Palazzo Pubblico) |
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view of Il Campo. the black and white striped stones on the third story of the buildings
are remnants of the original city walls. |
the high point of the square, opposite the City Hall, is the Fountain of Joy (Fonte Gaia). the original fifteenth-century fountain has been significantly damaged and is now preserved inside a museum, but the copy here is quite beautiful. the relief panels are a testament to the good life in Siena, starting with how the city provided clean water to its citizens.
we walked down the slope of the Campo to reach the City Hall. just to the left of the entrance stands a small open chapel, built in 1348, which is still used every year to bless the contestants in the Palio races.
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| fanciest drain cover ever! |
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| detail of the City Hall |
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| so many details everywhere you look! |
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| the little chapel (which apparently is also a great place to rest your travel-weary feet) |
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| the outdoor altar |
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| inside the courtyard of the City Hall |
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the City Tower was built in 1340 and is known as Torre del Mangia (Tower of the Eater),
apparently named after a notable bell-ringer |
the City Hall houses a delightful museum. as part of your visit, you can also climb the 400 steps to the top of the tower, but we figured that wasn't our smartest move with the girls, so we stuck to the main part of the museum. the first room focuses on the Risorgimento, the unification of Italy in the nineteenth century. the more traveling we do around the country, the more i grasp how utterly mammoth this task was!
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| this room is still used for civic events |
the chapel contains some of the most beautiful choir stalls we have ever seen, carved in the early 1400s by Domenico di Niccolo (who became so famous for this work that he later was referred to as "di Niccolo
dei cori", or "di Niccolo of the choir stalls"). each of the stalls is and inlaid with a phrase from the Apostles Creed.
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| the chapel |
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| Romulus and Remus with the wolf |
the largest room in the City Hall is the Sala del Mappamondo. the stunning Maesta, painted by Simone Martini in 1315, hangs here. you don't have to know much about art to be floored by its beauty and intricacy -- even the girls were in awe.
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| Mary and Jesus are enthroned at the center, surrounded by angels, apostles, and Sienese saints |
the Sala della Pace, the next room, is arguably the most important room in the hall. this is where the Council of Nine, the group who ruled the city from 1287 to 1355, met to discuss policy and laws. the entire room is covered with a fresco entitled The Effects of Good and Bad Government, which details the virtues as well as the seven deadly sins and graphically depicts the consequences of each.
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| the virtues, including Pax (peace) reclining on the left |
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| Cecilia consulting our beloved Rick Steves guide book |
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| poor Greta was a little confused and thought that this room was also a chapel |
then we had a lovely surprise in discovering an open loggia with a beautiful view over the city walls to the fields and woods beyond.
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| she's five. send help. |
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| i will never get tired of discovering Greta's selfies on my phone |
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| photo credit: Greta! |
after all this, we were ready for some lunch, and we found a great little pizza al taglio shop offering a wide variety of pizza by the slice. their house special had sausage and potatoes on it. sign us up! with full bellies, we entered a much more lively scene in Il Campo. Carnevale is officially at the end of February, but many Italian cities celebrate all month long. in Siena, the local shops were selling bags of confetti and little streamers, which kids in costume would throw into the air. at the time, i didn't realize that the confetti was for sale -- the girls just joined the other kids in scooping piles of it up off the ground and throwing it again and again. half the fun of traveling for me is planning the trip, scoping out the sights and putting together an itinerary that makes sense, but i also love these completely spontaneous magical moments.
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| this stroller deserves a medal of honor for all the abuse it has taken. i'm not sure a baptism in confetti counts. |
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| jackpot! Cece scored a streamer |
we wandered around the city for a bit, following Rick Steves' Siena City Walk. the Palazzo Chigi-Saracini once belonged to the prestigious Chigi family of bankers. now it's home to a music school as well as a restaurant.
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| Cecilia wasn't too thrilled about posing with her saint's doorframe |
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| postcards with all the different contrade! |
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| at Quattro Cantoni (the Four Corners) -- the column is actually from 1996. the stone tower (where the circular red and blue traffic sign is) used to have only one external door located on the second story, accessible only by ladder. |
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| coats of arms ringing the roof of another Chigi family palazzo |
finally, we reached the Duomo! this cathedral is absolutely massive. construction began in 1215 in Romanesque style, and continued into the 1300s in the Gothic style. the bell tower looks even taller than it is, because the white marble stripes get narrower near the top. initially this cathedral was planned to put Florence's Duomo to shame -- the completed building was supposed to be the transept (the short arm of the traditional cross shape). a massive unfinished wall stands to the side where you can see where the nave (the long arm) was supposed to extend. why wasn't the Duomo completed? the Black Death devastated the city in 1348, killing many of the workmen as well as the aristocracy who were bankrolling the construction project.
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| the Duomo is built on the highest point in the city, with its bell tower stretching toward the sky |
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my phone couldn't balance the different light exposures here, but i just had to capture the incongruity
of this modern "art" installation on the opposite side of the piazza. one of these things is not like the other ... |
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| every inch of the facade is gorgeous! |
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| the unfinished wall |
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| this was supposed to be the nave, and has now been turned into a museum |
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these stairs leading down past the baptistery are known as the Steps of St. Catherine,
who worked in the hospital on the other side of the church |
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| the Steps of St. Catherine -- she fell near the top of these steps once and broke her leg. |
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| the view across the valley towards the Basilica of San Domenico, where St. Catherine's head is preserved |
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| somehow i don't mind graffiti so much if it's Palio themed! |
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| Piazza Indipendenza (here we have a yellow 19th-century loggia, a brown gothic palace, and a stone medieval tower) |
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| an announcement to the neighborhood of the Selva (forest) |
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| an enigmatic maxim: "Whoever stays here, obtains what he loses" |
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| i think these horses are like the Sienese version of Secretariat |
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| the Loggia della Mercanzia, built in 1420 for the union of the merchants. it's still an old boys' club, which Rick Steves describes as "ritzy and notoriously out-of-step-with-the-times". |
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| Gli Uniti: "The United Ones" (aka Keep Out of Our Clubhouse) |
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| Piazza Tolomei, where the Tolomei family palace is now a bank. the column topped by the she-wolf functions as a community bulletin board of sorts |
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| you may have shopped at Benetton before, but was it a Benetton on the ground floor of an Italian palace? |
Nick was chomping at the bit to explore some of the other churches that weren't specifically highlighted on Rick Steves' walking tour, so we took a detour to the Basilica of San Francesco. this massive church was built from 1228-1255 and later enlarged, but unfortunately most of the interior was destroyed by fire in the seventeenth century, and has never been restored completely. in a way, the vastness of the basilica is even more apparent since the interior is mostly empty.
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| the bell tower dates from 1763, but the facade was completely re-done in the early twentieth century AND IT SHOWS |
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| the high altar |
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| fifteenth century fresco of the Crucifixion |
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| the cloister |
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| information about the miracle of the Holy Hosts. in August 1730, a silver pyx holding 351 consecrated Hosts (the Communion wafers) was stolen. the Hosts were found three days later in a box for alms in a nearby church and returned to San Francesco. since that time the Hosts have remained fresh. |
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| seeing so many well-preserved frescoes, i sometimes forget the restoration work that has gone into them. this fresco reminded me of how old this art truly is. |
outside the church, we discovered a quiet little playground so the girls could let off some steam.
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| Blessed Savina Petrilli founded the Sisters of the Poor of St. Catherine of Siena in 1873, with the approval of Pope Pius IX, who incidentally founded both the PNAC where we live and also Greta's school. |
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| Mommy and Daddy got to let off some steam too... |
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then the girls made a new friend, little Emilio, who had brought a collection of seventeen balls (each in the colors
of a contrada), to race in their own version of the Palio down this wooden ramp. so cute! |
finally we had to leave the park to ensure that we made it to the Sanctuary of St. Catherine and the nearby Basilica of San Domenico before they closed. i read a biography of St. Catherine of Siena prior to our trip, and it gave me much more insight into the life of this unique saint. born in 1347, she was a mystic and a theologian but remained a laywoman, although she did become a Third Order Dominican (active in religious life but without becoming a nun). she was illiterate but dictated long letters of spiritual wisdom and exhortation. she traveled throughout Italy urging reformation of the clergy, decrying corruption and emphasizing the importance of caring for the sick and the poor. she herself worked at the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, just opposite the Duomo. most famously, she had a great influence on Pope Gregory XI. the papacy had moved from Rome to Avignon in 1309 with the election of a French cardinal who became Pope Clement V and refused to re-locate to Rome. for the next 67 years, the papacy remained in Avignon. (paradoxically, it gives me hope that the Church has been mishandled by so many men with their own interests at heart and yet continues to flourish today!) Pope Gregory XI was the seventh pope in Avignon, and Catherine repeatedly urged him to move back to Rome. he eventually did just that in 1377. Catherine herself died in 1380 at the age of thirty-three after suffering a stroke. she is the patron saint of Rome, of Italy, and of Europe, and she was declared a Doctor of the Church due to her inspired theological writings.
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| we are now in the Owl contrada! |
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| heading down the hill to reach St. Catherine's house |
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| this sanctuary was built around the site of Catherine's family home |
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| i just love the strength and determination in this medieval woman! |
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| lighting a prayer in the chapel |
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this plaque commemorates the date that St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena were proclaimed
the first women doctors of the church, in 1970. St. Therese of Lisieux and St. Hildegard of Bingen are now doctors of the church as well, along with 32 men. |
from St. Catherine's home, we could look across the rooftops that she would have seen on her walks to the Basilica of San Domenico on the ridge. this church was monumental in her life; she had many mystical experiences here, and her father and other family members are buried in the crypt. no photographs are allowed inside the basilica, but i did sneak this blurry photo of the steps up to the St. Catherine Chapel where she often joined the nuns in prayer.
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| another clandestine photo of the interior |
the following photos of the chapel with St. Catherine's relics come from the
church's website. if you don't have a particularly strong stomach, you might want to skip the following details, but here's what happened. when St. Catherine died in Rome in 1380, her body was buried there in a tomb that was unfortunately not very well sealed. rainwater seeped into the tomb and hastened the decomposition of her body. in 1383, St. Catherine's spiritual director had her body transferred to the nearby Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, the church with the elephant obelisk out front, just around the corner from the Pantheon. her body still remains there, preserved in a marble tomb beneath the altar. but the Sienese, of course, wanted to be able to honor their saint in her hometown. so her spiritual director was able to have her head removed from the corpse (not by forceful decapitation, but because the soft tissues had already disintegrated), and sent to Siena. her head is now displayed in a reliquary in a beautiful chapel decorated by the artist Antonio Bazzi, a student of Leonardo da Vinci. walking past the chapel, the glare off the glass in the reliquary often keeps you from a clear view of her head, but if you shift just an inch, suddenly you can see it right there in front of you.
of course, Greta was absolutely entranced by this (as i would have been at her age!). we whispered some short explanations to her while inside the church and said a prayer. then outside the church, we were able to have a more in depth conversation. her takeaway from our discussion? "Mommy, when i die, can my head be in a church?" ... "well, i suppose it could be, if you become a saint." "how do i be a saint?" "you love God very much and try to do what He says, like being kind and listening to your parents." i'm still quite sure that her motivation for achieving sainthood is mostly the thought of having her own head on display somewhere. but she was noticeably more well behaved for the rest of the trip, so i'll take it!
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| the view from outside the basilica |
we walked the half hour back to our hotel, took an hour to relax and unwind, and then set off in search of dinner. we had a great experience at Antica Trattoria Papei, which looked a bit too fancy for us inside, but had covered outdoor seating in a heated tent. a more casual, kid-friendly atmosphere with the same delicious food? perfetto! the girls devoured their ragu served over pici, thick homemade spaghetti noodles, while we shared an antipasto platter and a wild boar entree for Nick and roast duck for me.
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| we could have just eaten at this place... |
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| Greta didn't want to be in our selfie on our walk back to the hotel |
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| Greta found the exact spot on the steps where St. Catherine fell and broke her leg |
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| sunset over the Duomo |
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| hot mess express |
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| Greta has perfected her pasta twirling technique |
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back at the hotel. they raced up the stairs and sat down outside our hotel room to color before i could get there
with the key to let them in. goofballs! |
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