We only spent one day in Siena, and it wasn't even a whole day, but it seems I am still writing about it. It such an amazingly beautiful city. Again in Siena, I was (understandably) struck by the oldness of it all. Like, when you 're in a place that was settled by Etruscans in 900-400 BC, it is a little mind boggling.
That's kind of an understatement.
I will pick up where I left off. I still won't finish up Siena today, but maybe by Wednesday. Then, next week, we can move on to somewhere else.
When we first got to the Piazza del Duomo, we tried to go into the Cathedral. What we didn't know is that we needed a ticket to get in! The ticket was a good purchase, because for about 12 euros, you can then get into the Cathedral, the Museo Dell'Opera del Duomo, the Crypt (underneath the Cathedral), the Panorama, which is a wall you can climb up onto with a view of the entire city, the Baptistry, and another place I can't remember, because we didn't visit whatever it was.
Oops. Bad memory.
This is a shot of the Cathedral from the side as we were walking back from buying our tickets. There was a guy right below this shot, totally rocking out on his accordian. I'm not sure why I didn't get a picture of him. He was playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Pretty amazing! And, look at that blue sky!!
Our first stop after getting our tickets, was the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, which is full of religious art. In this picture, you see one of a display of Illuminated Manuscripts (note: you weren't really supposed to take pictures in here, but I had to in order to show the Chick what I saw, so a lot of the lighting is dark and sometimes the shots are even a little blurry).
There was one whole room that was filled with Holy Relics. This is the crazily ornate box containing St. Clement. I have tried to figure out which St. Clement this was, as apparently there are about 8 St. Clements, but so far, I can't figure out who he was. He was pretty much all inside this box, though:
This is just some gorgeous stained glass window. I'm sure there's more aof a story to it, but really, it doesn't need one:
I tried really hard not to violate the rules too much and take too many pictures where I shouldn't. Just a few. :)
After leaving the Museo, we stopped for some lunch at this lovely place. I think I had pizza and sparkling mineral water:
This is another view from the side of the Cathedral as we are walking toward it...
...to go inside! Here is the view down the central corridor looking toward the alter. I'm sure "corridor" is not the architectural term. I love the Black and White Stripes!
The floor is absolutely gorgeous inside. Most of it is roped off and not allowed to be walked on. They had little paths so that you could get around. This shot shows a place in the floor where they had various Italian cities featured with their mascot animals. Siena is Romulus and Remus suckling from the Wolf:
And Pisa is.......A RABBIT!!! Well, somone had to be, right? Don't you imagine a great war waging over who got to be the Rabbit?
This is one of my favorite shots-- up into the Duomo! It was a tough shot to get, because I had to lean way over the ropes, and being a Very Small Animal with Very Short Arms, getting a shot of this was a challenge. But I like how it turned out:
This is a shot from behind the alter:
And this shows the Black and White Stripey-ness again. I love that!
On Wednesday, we will go to the Crypt, underneath the Cathedral and a couple of other places, and then we'll be ready to leave Siena.
See you then!
