7Euros, 388 steps and 102m

Tuesday I (Reed sat this one out since he had worked the night before) decided to climb the Torre Mangia (pictured to the left) which is 102m tall and was completed between 1338 and 1348. The tower was built to dominate the Sienese skyline and to be a symbol of the Republic's authority over any competing religious and aristocratic powers. The tower was the last great project of the commune before the Black Death decimated the population of Siena (from 100,000 to 60,000). The tower served a highly civic function: the bell was rung to order the opening of the city gates at dawn, the break for lunch, the end of the work at sunset, and the closing of the gates three hours later. Torre Mangia gets it name from one of the first bellringers, Giovanni di Balduccio a lazy, fat spendthrift nicknamed Mangiaguadagni "eat the profits."

This is the beginning. Lots of very cramped steps..........

....and more steps. There is only one way up and only 25 people are allowed to climb the tower at one time.....

This is one of the views from about half way up

View of the roof tops. Our apartment is out there somewhere.

View of the campo from above. You can see the Fonte Gaia ("Fountain of Joy") below, designed in the 15th century. The fountain's name comes from the festivities clebrating its innaguration in 1419, the climax of a long process that began in the 1340s, when masons managed to channel water into the campo.

The loooong way down

Oliver looking at the people and pigeons in il Campo

Il Campo at night. The beginnings of the Campo (which means field) were in 1293 when the Council of Nine (who ruled Siena from 1285-1355) began buying up land (actually the only piece of land still available), which was the site of the old marketplace and the old Roman forum. The piazza was completed in 1349 (a year after the Black Death) when the council laid nine segments of paving to commemorate their highly civic rule and to pay homage to the Virgin, the folds of whose cloak it was intended to symbolize (you can see the segments better in the fourth picture from the bottom).