Next stop - SIENA
I love it here. I stayed a few days with my friend Chris in 2009, and it was just so cool. And hey, it still is!
When one is touring the sights in Italy - most of Europe I suppose, but certainly Italy - one quickly realizes that it’s going to be one mind-blowing cathedral after another. It’s amazing, it’s very Catholic, and you embrace it. They are full of history, amazing and innovative architecture, and dripping with ancient art. They’re on every other block, and you go into all of them. It gets to the point where you’ll walk into a building that would make you stop everything and stare for hours in amazement if you saw it back home, and now you go ‘wow, very cool’ and you walk out.
The Siena cathedral though, it’s next level. Visually it’s almost an assault, it’s so intense and there is so much to see. But it’s so incredibly impressive that you quickly forget your shock and move straight to awe and gawking.
A little history: Siena’s cathedral stands over an existing church that was itself built on top of a 9th century temple dedicated to the Pagan god Minerva. Wish I could find out more info on that, but my cursory internet search reveals very little. Anyway. Construction of the ‘new’ cathedral began in 1200, and the following couple centuries saw a few stops and starts due to ambitions vs money, and of course the plague in the 1300’s. The final product, though! It’s full of sculptures by famous artists and designers of the day, a chapel by Bernini, different coloured marble everywhere you look. Possibly the most important and interesting work is the floor: 56 different marble inlays carved by 40 different artists showing different bible stories (naturally, not all of them pleasant). Often the floor is covered over with wood planks for protection so you can’t see them, but - miracle! - they were all visible when we were there. And seriously, wow.
Obviously a few photos aren’t going to do any kind of justice here. But we took some anyway, so you may as well have a look.
Piazza del Campo!
Gelato!