Mark says: Today is our last whole day in Tuscany and we want to make the most of it. Of everything we have seen and done in Tuscany we enjoyed the hot baths the most. We decided to visit Siena for a while and then visit the nearby baths at Rapolano again.
Siena is a classical medieval town and rivaled Florence at its peak (1260 - 1348). The maze of alleys was interesting, old palaces on most, and pretty much all of them leading in the direction of either Piazza del Campo or the Duomo.
The Duomo of Siena was built from the 12th to 14th centuries and remains incomplete to this day. As with most Duomo’s the façade is resplendent with sculptures and ornately constructed columns. The inlaid marble floors within the Duomo were fantastic and included The Massacre of the Innocents, which we now seen on a number of occasions (I still have no idea what it is all about). The floors are usually covered all year except for September – how fortunate for us! The Duomo also contains sculptures by Michelangelo, a Baptismal Font by Donatello, and intricate pulpit panels and frescoes. A room to the left side of the Duomo contains the Piccolomini Library in which is displayed very large old hand painted books, it was really marvelous. There are also fine frescoes within the library depicting the life of Pope Pius II.
I tried to get to the top of the nave in the uncompleted section of the Duomo, however the wait was more than half an hour and we were hungry and wanting to go to the hot baths, so I gave this a miss. The views of Siena are meant to be spectacular though. (Michelle: The unfinished nave gives you a really good idea of how big they were hoping to make this Duomo. If it had been completed, I am pretty certain it would have been right up there with the biggest in Italy).
We had a look in the Baptistry on the way to Piazza del Campo but this proved to be quite disappointing compared to the Duomo and the Baptistry in Florence.
We made our way down to the Piazza del Campo, surely one of the nicest in Italy. It apparently occupies the site of an old Roman forum, and its nine segments of red brick paving (begun in 1327) was designed to reflect the authority of the city’s Council of Nine. The piazza slopes down towards the town hall, Palazzo Publico with its tower. The little Fonte Gaia on one edge of the piazza was originally installed in 1409 (it’s now a copy) and whose water is still supplied by a 500 year old aqueduct. The pigeons seemed to love it as well, there were as many pigeons as there were tourists!
We proceeded to buy a plate, have lunch at a restaurant highly rated on Trip Advisor and which turned out to be quite plain, and then went to the wonderfully relaxing hot baths at Rapolano for the rest of the afternoon.
Michelle: The plates, wow, I am so glad we have decided to replace our mismatched sets at home with mismatched sets from all over Europe! The plates at Siena though made for some hard decisions. There are 17 contrada in Siena, they are like localities or parishes. Loyalty to your contrada (where you were born) is quite fierce, which is shown in the twice-yearly ‘Palio’. The palio is a reenactment of ancient rivalries and is a bareback horserace around the Piazza del Campo. They take it very seriously, and the festivities last for days. Anyway, each contrade has its own animal symbol which is shown on flags, signs, and most importantly (for me at least) on hand drawn plates. These designs are under strict quality control, so there are no cheap reproductions for tourists – you have to buy the ridgey didge thing. There were plates with unicorns, hedgehogs, elephants –all sorts of animals! Of course, we (and I DO mean WE, not just me) wanted to buy them all. Alas, between the cost of hand painted plates, and baggage allowances, and the weight of the bloody things anyway, we had to decide on just one. So, while there are symbols for each contrade, there is also a symbol especially for Siena, which was a black goat, not unlike the goat in the Capricorn zodiac sign. We saw this symbol everywhere, including the borders of the marble floor in the Duomo, and so we decided to get a plate with that design.
That night we had some drinks with our co-inhabitants of Novole (Frank and Francois from Amsterdam). They were there for a week as well, just them and their two dogs. Nice guys too, and it was lovely to sit around and have a yak with some other people. Frank runs an art gallery and has decided to specialize in bowls. Maybe one day we will get to Amsterdam and take a look at some bowls!
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