We decided on going to Siena both as a quieter stop after the rush of Rome and as a central location from which to explore Tuscany. It was a 3 hour bus ride from Rome to Siena, and it was wonderful to watch the landscape change from city, to suburbs, to agriculture.
When we arrived in Siena and checked into our room, here is the sight that greeted us:
Siena is a beautiful city on a hill who saw its heyday in the 1300s. It is exactly what I pictured in my kind when thinking about a medieval city in the heart of Tuscany. The streets are so beautiful that they invite you to wander.
But the heart of Siena is the Campo, the large “square” in the center of town.
This is the social and political center of Siena. It is also the place where they run the Palio horse race twice a year. This race provides bragging rights to one of the 17 neighborhoods, or Contratas, that make up Siena (as we stayed in an inn in the Elephant Contrata neighborhood, I’m now rooting for them). The center of the Campo fills with people and the area around the center gets covered in dirt and straw. The race than has 10 horses and riders making 3 laps of the Campo to determine the winning Contrata. The race takes about 90 seconds and anything goes: you can push and shove other horses and jockeys. And the winner is the horse that finishes first whether or not there is still a jockey (the jockeys ride bareback and often fall off before the race is over). We were told it’s quite the event.
We chose to use the Campo for it’s other purpose: people watching.
It was a great place to have a glass of wine and a platter of local Tuscan delicacies.
If the Campo is the heart of Siena, the Duomo di Siena provides the soul. The building looks much like a zebra:
The stripes, made of green marble, were designed to create an optical illusion: the stripes get closer towards the top of the building to make it appear bigger than it is. That stripe theme continues inside:
One interesting fact: the building was never completed. A whole other wing had been started but never completed due to the arrival of the Plague, which killed a significant portion of the population. The town never finished the addition, but you can still see where it had been begun. This view is from the side of the Duomo looking at what would have been a perpendicular expansion, and which is now just a parking lot.
In addition to enjoying wandering around this magnificent city, we also enjoyed the wine and food (no surprise there!). In fact, we believe that the dinner we had at restaurant Tar Tufo, located at our inn, was one of the best we’ve ever eaten. My homemade pasta had grilled, fresh artichokes and was covered with fresh, local truffles (I can eat pasta with truffles every day of the week). And the risotto leigh had was brought to the table in a wheel of pecorino cheese, which was then tossed in the wheel and served.
We adored Siena and look forward to going back.