Siena and San Gimignano

Woke up at 6 today so as to be ready at 7 to leave for the Piazza Indipendenza to meet the SACI bus for the field trip today. We left at 7:30 and arrived in Siena at 8:45, or thereabouts.

Green things on the way to Siena.

In the background you can kind of see the city.

Some walls outside the city.

A view of the Siena cathedral from afar.

In the distance is the cathedral again.

Our first stop was at a Domenican church for St. Catherine of Siena. It was kind of creepy inside because they actually had Catherine's mummified head on display in one of the chapels. No photos allowed, but it mostly looked like how you would imagine a mummified head to look. They had one of her thumb bones, too.

The outside of the church. Interesting reliefs on the door.

 After that we took a coffee/breakfast break in the Piazza Campo. which is a semicircular kind of open city center with eating places surrounding it. Siena consists of a lot of hills, and the piazza is at the base of a few of them.

Hills of Siena.

I did not plan this photo out well.

Nice one-point perspective!

My face!

This building has nice Gothic windows.

Apparently that building was a bank.

They like sticking disembodied heads on the sides of buildings here.

They have a myth here similar to the Romulus and Remus Rome myth for the founding of Siena, so there's a lot of wolves everywhere.

The Piazza Campo. The building with the tower is the Palazzo Pubblico, pretty much the town hall.

Another view of the Piazzo Campo.

Nice fountain, the Fonte Gaia, that doubles as free drinking water, something that would never happen in LA.

More fountain, plus some buildings.

Breakfast! I got a caffe latte (coffee and milk) and this croissant thing that had custard in the middle.

After coffee we went into the Palazzo Pubblico and looked at the frescoes inside. The main one was called Good and Bad Government, and it's all about representing the nice happy things that happen when the government is good, and the unfortunate things that happen when government fails. Siena was very proud of its medieval government.

The Palazzo courtyard.

Still the courtyard.

Some frescoes.

This fresco is known as Guido Riccio da Fogliano on route to Montemassi, but the art history professor explained that it was probably a repainting covering an earlier fresco on the same wall. She then went on to cite all the evidence, and it was quite interesting how all the little details gave a clue to the fresco's actual time period.

Wider view of the same fresco.

Good government.

A model of part of the city, it looks like. I thought it was cool.

Then to the Cathedral, a big striped building with some snazzy arches. The Sienese meant to build a super swank cathedral to beat out the one in Florence, but the church was never finished because of technical problems and the 1348 plague, so there's bits of cathedral ruin next to what is the finished cathedral.

We got tickets that covered the cathedral and all the surrounding attractions, so the first visit there was the Baptistery. It had a font with sculptures by famous people like Donatello, Ghiberti, and Jacopo della Quercia.

In front of the cathedral. Lots of marble stairs.

The Cathedral. The professor had gone off to get tickets, so I had time to take photos.

That's me! Same location.

So you can see the top of the building.

More!

Finally inside the baptistery. There's the fount.

The walls are all striped.

Some ceiling!

We then went to a crypt that had some Jesus frescoes on display, and then the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, which had all sorts of fun stuff.

A fuzzy picture of the crypt.

This was a gate that led from the outside to more of the outside.

I'm a professional photographer, yup.

The duomo museum. It was dark in there so that the stained glass window would look pretty.

This woman has a funky neck.

Colors.

Some fancy books.

Gold flowers. These reminded me a bit of Bubee's (sp?) flowers. They look like they were made the same way.

That's a skull in a gold case. Horror movie material.

A Christian mehitzah.

This one is called the Madonna of the Big Eyes. It was later replaced on the Cathedral altar by another set of more modern Jesus paintings. The art history professor made a big fuss about that other altar piece, but to me it looked so typically like other Jesus pictures I had seen before that I didn't bother to take a picture.

We then went into the actual Cathedral, which has a marble pulpit that's supposed to be a nice work of Pisano sculpture, but was covered up for restoration when we got there. However, we did get to see lots of frescoes by a Renaissance painter named Pinturicchio, Donatello's St. John the Baptist, the Piccolomini Library, and some Bernini sculptures.

Cathedral.

Me and Cathedral.

The inside of the Cathedral.

Donatello's St. John the Baptist

Opa!

Dead babies decorating the floor.

The library. Every available surface was decorated.

Another view.

That's the library ceiling.

After finishing up in the Cathedral it was around 1:30 and also lunchtime. After some wandering, I ended up getting a slice of margherita pizza, and then I went to a bakery called Nannini's and bought some pastries that are local to Siena, called ricciarelli and panforte. I also got a biscotti that was basically a mandelbroit... Grandmother's are better.

Walking down the Siena streets.

Lunch. They sort of skimped on the basil.

Examples of the pastries. I got one of each to try.

Selfie after lunch.

I met up with the group again at 2:30 and we walked back to the bus to drive off again, to a city called San Gimignano, arriving at 3:45. The art history teacher calls it the Manhattan of Tuscany, but I don't understand why because the city looks absolutely nothing like Manhattan. The city is known for having a bunch of towers, but that's the only similarity I can come up with. The city and its surroundings are absolutely beautiful, and I took a bajillion pictures.

Views from the bus on the way there.

Getting off the bus.

Arches and other fun stuff.

Walking through the city was pretty neat, and we eventually got to the Collegiata, or collegiate church. This place had the Chapel of Santa Fina, who was a young girl who died at 15 but somehow still became a saint because some miracles happened while she was dying. The church also had some frescoes from the Old and New Testament, with a big focus on the story of Job because the plague hit San Gimignano hard and the city related to the Job story.

Outside the church.

Stairs to the church.

And now inside the church.

The chapel of Santa Fina. There may or may not be Fina body part remains here.

More church and its surroundings pictures that were taken while the professor got some museum tickets. I may have gotten too excited with the camera at this point and took too many pictures. I left some out of the blog because upload time takes too long, but here's the majority.

At some point during the field trip today my hair decided it would try to defy gravity in all directions. I will blame it on the weather.

It was supposed to rain all day today, but all we got was a light drizzle for half an hour this afternoon. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed, because I had brought an extra jacket and everything.

That thing at the top looks like the batman symbol. It's not, but I don't know what it's actual purpose is.

We then went to the Civic Museum, which had some paintings and other artistic things collected. And then we went and climbed the tallest of the towers in the city, part of the museum in the Palace of the Podesta. Climbing up the tower renewed a long-buried fear of heights in me, because you could see right through the stairs and, at the very end of the staircase, there was a steep ladder to climb to the top. I managed, though. The view from the top of the tower was like looking at a panoramic postcard.

A more modern bust of Dante in the museum.

Hooray for more frescoes!

View from the top of the tower.

So maybe I went a bit nuts with the pictures.

Looking over the edge of the staircase. Lots of climbing!

Leaving the church area. We saw rain clouds but no rain.

We left the church at around 6 and walked to the Rocca, or the fort, behind the church. The professor bought all of us some pecorino cheese and Vernaccia white wine to try (plus some wild boar, that I didn't try). The pastries that I got earlier today also turned out to go very well with the wine.

Definitely the most picturesque thing I have done in Italy thus far.

 And from there, at around 6:30, we went back on the bus to Florence.

Goodbye San Gimignano! You will be missed.

We got back to Florence at 7:30, and after a brief stop at the 99 Cents Store (for paper) and Carrefour (for milk and pasta) I got back to the apartment. While waiting for pictures to upload here, I contemplated making some dinner, but then the roommates started making there own dinner, and I thought I'd just wait it out until the kitchen was free. I eventually boiled some pasta and had that and some prunes while trying to help David with his essay, which he had better have all edited and done by the time I wake up tomorrow.

Also apparently I look silly when I try to take pictures of myself... though now people are impressed with my blind camera-aiming skills.