Siena

Word of the Day:  Hills - STEEP Ones!

Today we started out early - we left this beautiful morning scene from our villa apartment...

 

to this beautiful scene, our destination for the day, the Duomo in Siena.

 

OK, let's talk hills. Siena is a medieval city of bricks and steep twisting alleys - that they still use as roads.  I'm beginning to understand why they have smaller cars over here!  We had to climb this street, plus several other ones, to reach the Duomo.  I'm standing under one of the neighborhood flags - the 17 neighborhoods here are very competitive with each other and compete in various things throughout the year.  The most famous is a horse race in their piazza twice a summer when they fill the very large piazza, Piazza del Compo, with sand and race the horses.

But, our main reason for the visit was the Duomo - which includes many forms of Tuscan art.  It is hard to describe the size of this church. 

 

This stained glass window is directly above the main alter.

What's under the actual dome?  This beautiful piece of artwork.  Aunt Wende says every time she is here and looks up she is sure she feels angels. 

I noticed many people weren't looking up at the ceiling, and too bad - because this is the ceiling.
 

Even the floors are beautiful  - there are 59 etched and inlaid marble panels throughout the church covering much of the floor.  We also got to visit the newly discovered "crypt", where amazing original frescoes remain all done by an unknown artist. The crypt was an old entrance to a Roman church. We could see original pieces of columns  and pieces of marble artwork, all a few stories under ground under where the Duomo stands today.  They had built part of the floor in the crypt as see-through so it was if we were standing on the ceiling looking down into an older church - even though we were already underground a few stories. No pictures allowed in the crypt :-(

Siena - the hills were worth it!