A Room With a View

Siena, September 16-18

We stopped for two nights in Siena on our way from Venice to Rome on the advice of Rick Steeve’s Italy guidebook; “its a must see”. He was right. It is a gorgeous old gothic city, with an old town center that hasn’t changed much since the 1500’s. The reason? It lost big-time to the Florentines back then and lost it’s economic vitality and power. In the end, though, I think they won, or at least the tourists did. It is now my favorite Italian city.

Our hotel room was a big reason that Siena was so enchanting. It had an incredible view looking across a valley at the huge cathedral perched on the hill. Up the side of the valley clung old, tall, gothic brick buildings. Also, it was easy to get around, as the streets have been pediatrian-only since the 1960’s and it led to a sense of ease and relaxation. This was in contrast to Venice’s streets, which also had no cars. Their streets, though, were jam-packed with tourists. In addition, they were quite smoky, because of their narrowness, and being packed with so many smokers, the message about smoking not having seemed to have reached the Europeans yet. At the end of a day in Venice, I felt as if I had been smoking all day. It took away some of the charm of Venice for me.

There were really only two tourist sites to visit in Siena, apart from the overall look of the old city; the town square and the big cathedral. The square is where the Palio, the famous bareback horse race that pits 17 of the area’s neighborhoods against each other, has been run since the 1100’s. The square is large and surrounded on three sides by gothic brick buildings, about seven stories high. On the fourth side, the old city hall and clocktower are to be found. The main attraction, though, has to be the cathedral. It is one of the most beautiful churches I have seen, with great views from it’s hilltop perch. It is so large, that it has overrun the hilltop it is on. To overcome this, they built another building under one end of the cathedral to support an addition to it. It is literally covered in artwork; the floors, walls (inside and out) and the ceiling, including four statues by Michaelangelo. It was thoroughly enjoyable. An additional interesting note is that back in the 1300’s, they were planning on enlarging the cathedral to become one of the world’s largest when they were hit with the Black Plague. The loss of a third of their population, with the consequent loss of wealth, combined with the engineering difficulties they faced, led them to halt the work and tear down part of what they had done. There are still parts of that work evident, though. Even that seemed to add to the charm. It was a memorable two days.

-Mitch

P.S. You may have noticed our blogs are often posted late. There are a few reasons for this. One is that we may be too busy to take the time to write anything (frequent). Another is that sometimes there doesn’t seem to be anything remarkable to write about (rare). The most common reason, though, is the lack of internet access. Apparently, hotels have found it much easier to advertise that they have internet access than to actually provide internet service. Italy has been especially bad about is. With the kids needing the internet to take their classes, it is one of the criteria we have for a room.