A touristy day in Siena

So my friend from London came to Siena for the weekend and we decided to spend Saturday in Siena. Reed and I made a lunch reservation at one of our favorite restaurants in Siena: La Chiacchera. In the summer and when it is warm out, they have tables on a hill outside the restaurant. This is definitely a no frills type of restaurant: they give you one menu which is handwritten and almost entirely impossible to read; the menu does not have one word of English on it (a definite plus); you frequently have to share a table; and there is no coffee or anything like that. The food is great, and the wine is cheap (4Euros for a liter of wine)!

Then it was on to see the Duomo......


I have to say that it king of irritates me that in order to see the Duomo, the Baptistry and the Crypt you need to pay to enter three times! And.....the floor of the Duomo (one of the highlights) is covered the majority of the year except for a few weeks in August. Talk about a rip off! We just went into the Duomo this time.



The duomo is very ornate and I can still remember learning about it in Architectural History 101 at U.Va. It is really dark and they do not allow any flash inside-one of the reasons none of my interior photos came out! The picture below is of part of the mosaic floor that they keep hidden!


One of the most interesting parts of the Duomo (that you actually get to go into with your 3Euro Duomo admission ticket for free *gasp*) is the Libreria Piccolomini. It was very colorful and was commissioned by Francesco Piccolomini (who for ten days was Pope Pius II).

This was the ceiling....can't imagine painting that.....


The walls are covered with large ornate books.....


I think every inch of wall space was painted a bright color, quite a contrast to the dark black and white theme of the inside of the duomo....


As we left, the sun was beginning to set. Below is a picture of what was supposed to be an addition to the Duomo. In the 1300s, the people of Siena set off to enlarge the Duomo, doubling it in size. The black death in 1348, which killed more than half of the population of Siena, suspended these plans. Had the duomo been renovated, the new structure would have been the largest church in Italy outside of Rome....

The sun setting behind the duomo...


As we were heading home, we noticed that one of the Contradas, Selva (the woodland contrada), was having a small chestnut festival....



This picture is dark, but here they are roasting the chestnuts in the big cylinders that rotate and turn over the coils...


Home made vin santo, also called holy wine. It is a typical Tuscan dessert wine that I think is ok. Not the greatest, but not horrible. It is typically very sweet and when we had it in Lucca, it was served with a biscotti type cookie that you dunk into the vin santo....


Chestnuts....


The street. It was all decorated with the Selva contrada flag....


Overall, a great day!!!