80. Montalcino

Our last day in Tuscany, and also one of the best. Met up with Sylvio and his van in the morning, and drove southeast to Montalcino, probably my favorite town in Tuscany. The town was annexed by Siena in the thirteenth century, and this formidable fortress was built to defend the town. When Siena fell to Florence in 1552, the Sienese nobles fled here, and governed a make believe Siena in Exile for a few more years until Florence finally annexed Montalcino, its last conquest.

The interior is really stunning, a riot of black and white marble striping around a forest of arches. The colourful photo which contrasts with the mostly black and white colour scheme of the rest of the cathedral is a library built by a pope who came from Siena.

Siena's cathedral was built in the 12th century, and was the pride and joy of the city. Until, that is, Florence embarked on its building program and came up with a larger cathedral. This prompted the Sienese into the crazy idea of building the world's largest cathedral, by turning its existing cathedral into just one wing of a new super-cathedral. A set of enormous walls was then built to start Siena's Guiness record book entry, but eventually the plague made it impossible to continue with the oneupmanship. So the cathedral stayed pretty much as it was, with a couple of giant walls sticking out one side. Regardless of the addition, it's considered one of the most beautiful churches in Italy.

The city is almost entirely car-free apart from residents, which is a good thing because the medieval streets are really narrow. We had lunch at an outdoor restaurant in one of these alleys, then we continued our walkabout. We scored a photo jackpot when we got an old lady dressed in black down one of the alleys, a perfect Italian stereotype!

The last couple posts were kind of heavy, so here's some easy viewing for you. The city's a great place to walk around, and really empty of tourists once you leave the center.

Just some panoramic rooftop shots to reacquaint you with the burnt siena colour for those of you who've grown out of crayolas. The strict government that gave the world this colour and enforced the relative peacefulness of Siena had its proudest moment in 1260. Florence had assembled a huge army to conquer Siena, but Siena's badly outnumbered militia completely wiped out the invading army. It's regional dominance lasted for another hundred years, until it lost a third of its citizens from plague, and never recovered. This loss crippled the Council, and brought on the usual civil war to add to the plague deaths. Nonetheless, Siena maintained its independence until 1552, when a combined Spanish and Florentine army starved them into submission.

The Palazzo Pubblico has been the center of Siena's government since the early 1300's and still functions as the city hall. The city's nine leading families governed from here during Siena's golden years, and managed to coexist semi-peacefully for a while. This relative calm allowed it to grow into a full-fledged military and economic rival to Florence. It also accounts for the surprising harmony in the city's architecture, as the Council forbade the families from building heavily fortified palaces with huge towers and enforced height restrictions on buildings. The city also maintained a monopoly on brickmaking, ensuring that all buildings were made of the same uniformly coloured brick. The colour is of course memorialized in Crayola crayon sets as burnt siena.

Unlike Florence, which is stuffed with art museums, Siena's greatest art is actually painted on the walls of the Palazzo Pubblico. As a result many of the various chambers and meeting rooms are open to the public, and a visit here is the obvious highlight to any Siena visit.

73. Siena

The next day we took a bus to Siena, about an hour south of Florence and its main rival for dominance in Tuscany. (Actually I'm shocked we took a bus, as I'm really not a bus person, but that's what my journal says, so I'm sticking with it.) Southern Tuscany is much more rural than the North, and quite hilly. It was very foggy as we approached the city, but the fog burned off by mid-morning.







We made a beeline for the Campo, the beautiful piazza at the center of the city. The city straddles three separate hilly ridges, and each ridge is a distinct neighborhood with centuries-old rivalries among them. The three ridges come together physically at the Campo. The neighborly rivalries are also played out here each year, in the famous Palio horse race. The jockeys, dressed in medieval riding gear, push their horses furiously around the sharp corners of the Palio, and typically only a third make it all the way around, the rest collapsing around the sharp corners. The winner is treated like a hero by his neighborhood, while the losers are abused with swears and rotten vegetables for the whole year. Unfortunately, the city has discontinued the other neighborhood rivalry event, the gioca del pugno. In this festival, each neighborhood put up a team of 300 men, and the three teams then met in the Campo and had a huge no holds barred fistfight until only one team was left standing.


Even without horses thundering about the place, the Campo is a very lively town center. It's set up like a giant scallop shell, lined with the palaces of the old families and now housing cafes at ground level. There are nine segments dividing up the shell, each representing one of the families who governed Siena via its Council of Nine. These segments slope gently down and converge on the Palazzo Pubblico, or city hall. We had breakfast at one of the tourist cafes and watched the city waking up. It's a good idea to get here early, as the Campo fills up with tour groups by late morning.