It’s a short drive to Siena from our accommodation and we find the parking relatively easily, so we are in town quite early, but it’s baking hot already.
After our host’s birthday party yesterday their Sienese guests provided us with the top tip of: ‘you must see everything’. Not so useful but fairly accurate.
Given we have just one day and it’s super hot we decide to concentrate on the Duomo, but first take a quick detour via Piazza Del Campo where they hold the Il Palio horse race. The entire square is designed for this spectacle, being slanted to offer the best views to the spectators. It’s an impressively big square but how they can squeeze 60k people in and race 10 horses round is beyond us. It’s all over after just 90 seconds typically with many riders falling on the tight corners. It would be impressive to witness but we wonder how much you could see given the sheer number of people and it sounds like the horses take a bit of a beating in the process.
The Duomo is a welcome relief from the heat of the Piazza. It’s massive structure keeps us cool as we take in the myriad pieces of art. Seemingly every surface is adorned, one room has a gilded ceiling and silver hearts on the walls, the library is covered in frescos and illumined texts, the walls hold marble sculptures and the floor is an artwork in itself. There are two massive stained glass windows, one at each end, the immense dome is capped with a golden sun like lantern while the remaining ceiling is peppered with ‘OPA’ signs. It’s a lot to take in but its deliciously cool & uncrowded, so we take our time.
The Duomo has an intersting history. The site was originaly a small church which is now the baptistry, this was expanded on which is currently the Crypt, expanded upon again to make the impressive cathedral we see today but it didn’t stop there. Even though the Siena Duomo is seriously massive, the local population wanted to make it bigger still, so in 1339 they attempted to make it the largest building in Italy. By 1348 the extensions were abandoned following financial problems and a plague.
It’s interesting to descend through the crypt where huge buttresses to support the cathedral on top are just knocked through the ancient frescos and then deeper still into the Baptistry to see the different layers of the history to the building. But no layer is more obvious than the unfinished sections still standing outside, which now enclose two sides of a giant marble square that would have become the inside of the expanded cathedral. These are built to their full height and grandeur expecting the expansion to run to completion, amazing they can stand without a roof and to that height for nearly 700 years. A stark reminder of Italy’s recent catastrophic earthquakes is an exhibit in the crypt which is currently housing damaged relics recovered from several churches destroyed in neighbouring Umbria. Oddly I am happy to walk on the glass floor where you can look from Cathedral down into the Crypt but the thought of all that structure above while watching the destruction of the earthquakes makes me want to see the sky again.
Fortunately, we are booked on the Gate of Heaven tour where we can climb up into the roof structure and look down the nave from high up, see the tools and materials used and pop outside every now and then for some impressive rooftop views. It’s a timed tour that you have to book on with limited numbers which makes it all the more pleasurable. It’s stunning, if you are thinking of going, just book it.
We are all exausted by just looking round the Duomo but an easy mistake to make in Siena is thinking a straight line is the quickest way anywhere. On the way back to the car Ben navigates us all down a deep valley, the climb back up innumerable steps nearly does us in but we make it to the air conditioning of the car and back to the pool of the villa.