Our next class trip was to Siena, which is about 50 miles south of Firenze. Siena is relatively small, so it was just a day trip. We took a bus, and when we got off, we were unable to see any more than 100 yards in front of us due to some epic fog. At a point in the street, the professor stopped us and told us "This is where you can have a fantastic view of the city, but not today." How unfortunate.
Eventually we all arrived at Piazza del Campo, which is a really cool place that slopes downhill and radiates to the center of Palazzo Publico (1297), or town hall. Right next to that is the Torre del Mangia, which is HUGE. The place resembles Palazzo Vecchio in Firenze, but is much nicer and impressive in my opinion.
A courtyard in Palazzo Publico
And the Torre. (tower).... Well time to go up!
Town hall has green growing on the roof.
Time to go up! This tower is a must-avoid if you are claustrophobic, or have a fear of heights. The climb is INCERDIBLY tight in space, and the height is incredible!
Bell! And town!
This is the view down to Piazza del Campo. See the wee tiny people?
And the fog had yet to completely disappear. Combine that with the height and the medieval nature of the town, it felt completely unreal.
I tried to fit it all in a panorama. Tried. It was better. Moral of the story: GO TO SIENA IT'S AWESOME!
Forrest being Forrest.
This photo looks towards the Siena cathedral. Note: there is the cathedral itself, then there is that unfinished tumor of a giant church protruding from it, with the front facade still intact. The original cathedral was completed in 1226 and richly decorated in white and green marble, in a gothic style... Now back in the day, Siena had a significant rivalry with Firenze. And word got around that Florence was building a new cathedral. And having the largest cathedral was incredibly important. So a project called 'Duomo Nuovo' was launched to convert the current nave into the transept of a new cathedral in Siena, which if completed, would have been the largest in the world. In construction, they got as far as you see now until the year 1348 happened. Black Death. The plague killed off half of Siena's population. And it took about 700 years for the town's population to once again reach pre-1348 levels... However in 1355, architect Francesco Talenti was invited to asses whether or not they should continue on with the building project. He tells them that finishing construction was not feasible. So the cathedral stayed in its current shape... in 1357, Talenti went on to finish the bell tower in Firenze, and in 1361, became the head architect to finish the Florence cathedral project, heavily modifying the designs, bringing it into a renaissance style, and also elongating the plan by 12m so that way even if Siena did finish their new cathedral, Florence's would still be bigger.
Bell.
Weehoo!!! (note the shorter caption length)
Pigeon killers. But the top of the tower was actually pretty gross, and I felt like I had to wash my hands afterwards.
Just take a look at that shadow on the Piazza and surrounding buildings.
And.. We were all the way up there!!
I wasn't particularly thrilled with how this panorama came out. I was trying to show the 9 rays in the sunburst style piazza, but it all just came out somewhat parallel. But with the hills, and each section getting wider, there is a pretty trippy effect going on with the bricks.
The passage in and out of the Piazza del Campo is pretty awesome.
Here is the 'inside' of the unfinished Duomo nuovo. The building where the one aisle is, to the left, is a museum of the Opera. (Opera = a group that controls monies and oversees a building project on behalf of the comune) Inside are incredibly important works of art by Duccio. We spent an entire Italian art class talking about religious works of art in Siena, and to see them in person, was pretty fantastic. (No photos allowed in the museum!)
We were allowed to climb to the top of the unfinished new facade of the duomo.
View back to Piazza del Campo and Palazzo Publico.
Timo, our KSU-Florence director (he served as our guide for the day.) and AJ.
Looking down there were so many little urban spaces hidden from the street that looked so tranquil.
But let's not neglect the countryside! Absolutely gorgeous. Fog was still hanging around in the distance.
Next we went inside the finished Siena cathedral. Pretty extravagant, eh?
Dome!
Pulpit, richly detailed, looking to the back of the church.
In a side chapel, SJB, Saint John the Baptist!
This is the exterior, designed partially by Giovanni Pisano in 1300. One of the best gothic facades in Italy. But not perfect. Gothic architecture is all about continuous vertical lines, but note the horizontal break halfway up the facade. Below each section is the same size, and abovem the middle one is largest. This is a huge discontinuity, and according to my Italian art professor, (Much historical info comes from my notes from that class), that suggests another architect finished the design after Pisano did the top half.
A next stop was a museum, which used to be a hospital. Most people go to see the artifacts, but the reason we went was to see the renovation. (The woman from the museum would talk about some artifact, and our professor would talk about how the display case was designed and lit.) It had cool stuff like this, glass over a huge underground cistern.
And then the sun came out!
Side note about the Piazza: on the outer ring, twice during the summer, they have horse races. They are a huge spectacle and apparently people pack the inside of the piazza, pass out from heat exhaustion, due to standing in the sun for several hours, just to see a three lap race.
Our next stop was Palazzo Salimbeni, which is a bank. it is the oldest continually operating bank in the world. It has been open since 1472. It makes me want to open an account there!
But we had some down time before they would give us the tour, so a few of us started jumping on these things, and doing silly things. Eventually the professors told us they would go and get coffee and jokingly said anyone who wanted some, it would be on them. Half the class stayed in the piazza. I went to get coffee. And as it turned out they were serious. And they actually bought cappuccino for everyone who wanted one.
Despite the age of the bank, it was quite modern on the inside. Hooray for historic renovation. Those of us interested in historic preservation were geeking out sooooo much over this place. It was very nicely done.
There was this oval shaped void that let light in to all levels of this atrium.
bank records from 1627.
Another meeting room that has really cool forms and lighting techniques.
And an auditorium that is actively used for very many business functions. So historic but it still keeps its functional value.
A room with really old paintings of Piazza del Campo.
This was a big meeting hall. The ceiling was absolutely incredible.
And these huge chairs. All still in active use.
We finished our tour of the bank by going up to the roof, for another incredible view. This one had a gorgeous sunset.
SIENA
Pigeon killers were up here too.
What a way to finish off a great day trip to this fantastic little city.
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