Italy - Sienna

We made a day trip out of Florence to Sienna. Its about 1.5 hrs south of Florence, in the heart of Chianti country.

The first thing we came across when getting off the bus was an impressive church. We decided to go inside and have a look. There we found the preserved head of Saint Catherine. It was floating in a jar and looked very shrunken. They also had her thumb, but we couldn't see that as it was so small. We thought that this was all quite in keeping with the strange behaviour of the Roman catholic church. Later on we saw many more reliquaries (bones of saints and religous artifacts) in the museum of the Sienna Duomo.

Sienna's duomo is much smaller than the one in Florence. But what it lacks in size it makes up for with the stripes in its marble. The blue painted ceilings (with painted golden stars) gave the church an amazing light.

The floors were very detailed inlaid marble, based on etchings done specifically for the building. Its amazing how much marble is used in the buildings of Italy. Entire churches, and public buildings are built from what seems to be solid marble.

We went to see the Duomo museum, which houses all the paintings, sculpture, and ornaments that have been taken out of the church over time. These included our favourite which was a marble sculpture of a sleeping child.

From the museum we could access the tower which gave us sweeping views across Sienna to the tuscan countryside.

We also went to see the Crypt, and the Baptistry.

The pizza in Sienna was something totally different to what we'd seen so far. The slices were bigger than you can imagine. It was also very tasty and simple in the tuscan style.