Siena

Thought I was done with Tuscany, but I just want to add one more post about the town of Siena, which we visited on a day trip while in Tuscany.  The post will be more pictures than text, but I am guessing no one will mind.  :)  At one time, Siena was a major power in Italy rivaling Florence, but then it got struck with the Plague and never really recovered.  Now it is a major destination for tourists.  It is also known for a famous horse race in holds every year called the Palio.  The race is held right here in the main square of town, which is called Il Campo.

The square fans up and out from City Hall (the building with the tower) in an interesting way.  It had a nice, relaxed feel to it ~ people were definitely enjoying the space.

Our guidebook talked about a fountain on the square where the pigeons lined up to bathe and that is exactly what we found!  They were very polite...patiently awaiting their turn.

Family photo in Il Campo

Okay, I hope you will humor me regarding these next photos.  I was fascinated by all the different beautiful doors in Siena, so I thought I would post the pictures.  It was often difficult to get a great photo because the streets were not wide enough to get far enough back to get all the details in.

There is little in these photos to give them scale, so I don't know if you can tell, but these doors are HUGE!

This beauty was outside the door of a shop that sold wild boar meat.  We did not try any in Tuscany but we did try it in Florence and it was very good ~ tasted a lot like bacon.

I loved the look of this fruit market.  We stopped and bought some grapes and the merchant was SO nice.

He directed us just up the block to this fountain where we could wash our grapes before digging in.

They may have been the biggest grapes I have ever eaten....delicious.  I also posted this picture because I think it is the last one with Chris wearing his hat.  Our next stop was the Duomo and, of course, he had to take it off, as he had to do in all the churches we went into.  He set it down to light a candle and forgot about it until we were just about back to the car at the end of the day.  We offered to make the 20 minute walk (which would have been 40 minutes with the walk back) to go look for it, but he declined.  I think he was actually pretty sad, but handled it like a champ.  I miss that hat!

The Duomo

At first, I wasn't sure if I liked the marble stripes, but it quickly grew on me.  I ended up thinking it was one of the more beautiful churches we saw.  Following are some photos of elements within the church.

Lining the upper walls were busts of 172 popes, from Peter through the 12th century.  Chris requested a photo of this one. 

This room was called the Piccolomini Library ~ it held huge, intricately decorated musical scores.  The frescoes were stunning.

There were beautiful bronze sculptures ~ I loved how they looked against the green marble stripes.

A famous pulpit

This was the detail of the ceiling in the side nave ~ gorgeous.

The huge bronze outer doors

Chris seems to be losing steam with his blogging so I thought I would post one of his "charades" pics for you.  All he needs is the bird on his nose.

I loved all the little shops in Siena.

Here are the boys on the winding hilly streets of Siena as we headed back to the car.  It was a great day!