MacsTravel Blog

On our last two trips to Tuscany we had a chance to visit the wonderful city of Siena. In August. In high 30 temps. With 10,000 other tourists.

So it was a joy to have a chance to return on a beautiful sunny day in May with our friends, shepherded once again by Fernanda.

Parking in Siena requires a little planning. You can’t climb up into town unless you are a resident, so you are at the mercy of a series of roundabouts that encircle the base of the town, hoping that the parking lot you eventually enter is located close to

• A: stairs
• B: an escalator
• C: a working escalator
• D: a working escalator that is close to your meeting point with your guide

We lucked out on C but not on D, which meant a bit of a hunt for the gothic Basilica of San Domenico to meet up with our friends and guide. We quickly noted that Siena is still very much a living community, with many people making their homes in the tall red brick and stone buildings that line the streets.

The ten of us joined Fernanda, a native of Siena, on a four hour walk through the city, bisected by a very nice lunch at an out of the way osteria. It was a lot of steps on stony and hilly streets, but well worth it.

A few highlights of our day in Siena.

The Basilica of San Domenico

We started here at this imposing red brick gothic basilica which dates back to the early 1200’s. It sits just outside the city walls, and provides a vivid counterpoint to the marble majesty and ornate nature of the Duomo in the city centre. Unless you have a fixation on medieval relics, the interior is relatively uninteresting as the original frescoes were all whitewashed during the plague years in the belief that the disease was lurking in the colours on the wall. Clearly vaccine skepticism gripped the medieval time period as well.

The Contrade

The contrade in Siena refer to the 17 districts in the city. With origins in medieval times, the contrade is a common organizational feature of many municipalities in Italy. What is unusual in Siena is their highly partisan, secretive, culturally rich and competitive nature, which is a pretty accurate description of our group of 10 here in Italy as well. The Sienese contrade are particularly competitive when it comes to the Palio races, held in July and August. Ten contrade are selected for each race, and which is held in the Piazza del Campo.

The contrade are represented by animals or mythological creatures and their crests are displayed on street plaques marking specific contrade neighborhoods. The entire city of Siena is divided into these 17 areas, with three exceptions: the Piazza del Campo (the seat of local government), Piazza Salimbeni (the location of Siena’s historic banks) and Piazza del Duomo (the religious centre of town). During the time of the Palio races (July and August), special street lamps and flags festoon the building walls, offering vibrant and whimsical splashes of colour against the burnt Siena brick.

We happened to be there the week after the draw which selected the ten contrade competing in the July race, so many of the districts had their colours on display.

Each contrada has its own social club and cultural centre, run by volunteers and funded by donations and cultural events, which contains archives, displays the banners won at various Palio competitions over the last 500 years. They even have private museums. Our guide Fernanda is a native of Siena and a proud member of the rhino contrada. She had arranged a tour of the Owl contrada, which has only recently opened its space up for visitors to explore (a number of contrada have started to do this for a cost – horses and jockeys don’t come cheap). This was particularly exciting for me as it opened my eyes to a rich element of Siena history that I knew very little about.

The visit to the Owl contrada was tremendous and I would highly recommend taking a tour if you have the opportunity. It gives you a sense of the huge importance of the Palio, the dynamism, pride and deep rooted history of the contrade, and a peek at the very bones of the city itself, as you can see from the photos that follow.

Piazza Salimbeni

This piazza is the center of Siena’s historic banking and finance industry, and the imposing renaissance buildings encircle the small square on three sides. It does give you a sense of the financial power of Siena in the Renaissance.

Piazza del Campo

This fantastic piazza is the front porch for the residents of Siena, and one of the most impressive piazzas in Italy. It was wonderful to visit it on a day which wasn’t particularly busy with tourists: in the summer there is much less room to move in the square.

Visiting the Campo you can’t help but visualize what it must feel like to be here for one of the Palio races. This image, from the Visit Tuscany website, gives you a sense of how the square is transformed. If you are lucky enough to get a seat in the middle you have to stay there for up to 12 hours without access to a washroom before you finally get to watch the race, which takes about 90 seconds.

Piazza del Duomo

The Duomo in Siena is a very impressive cathedral with its elaborate and ornate marble facade and beautiful interior. The massive scale, and incomplete attempt to attach a giant nave to the right of the building both reflect the wealth and ambition of this city state.

The interior is incredible, from the intricately carved marble and mosaic flooring to the majestic blue and gold tints of the ceiling.

The Pinturicchio library is particularly impressive with its vibrantly coloured frescoes.

It was a terrific day in a great Italian city.