Sept 22 - Siena

 Sept 22 - Siena 

An early start today to miss the day-tripper tour groups.  We’ve no idea where they’re from, Florence maybe?, cruise ships?, wherever!  they obviously don’t think Siena’s worth more than a few hours though, which is just lunacy!  Anyway, we started off today with a visit to ‘Il Facciatone’, ‘The Great Facade’. 


This ‘Facciatone’ is probably the best spot in town for views of the city, cathedral, and countryside, and is the name given to the unfinished facade of a huge building project from the early 1300’s. This project was to expand the size of the ‘Duomo’ and envisaged that the current Cathedral should only represent the transept of the “new cathedral”!  Unfortunately though the ‘Black Death’ paid a visit and this put paid to any further work shortly after the construction of the facade. 


Just alongside the ‘Facade’ is the ‘Museo dell'Opera del Duomo and this was our next stop.  The Museo is a museum housing artworks and architectural fragments that were formerly part of the cathedral, including a relief by Donatello and the original facade window.  It’s not that big a museum, and there’s not really a lot on display, but there’s still some nice exhibits nevertheless    

Next on our list of places to visit was the cathedral’s crypt.  This is actually quite unusual in that it was only discovered in 1999 during renovations to the church.  The room, with magnificent frescoes on all of its walls, has been dated to the second half of the 13th century but remained buried and hidden for almost 700 years.

Following on from the Crypt we visited the ‘Baptistery of Saint John’.  Built in the 14th century, this rather plain looking, but unfinished, building, houses some magnificent coloured frescoes from the 15th century.  The standout here though, apparently, is a spectacular hexagonal marble, bronze and enamel Baptismal Font which was sculpted by, amongst others, Ghiberti and  Donatello.  I say ‘apparently’ because, unfortunately, the whole centrepiece was covered in scaffolding, from floor to ceiling, and we didn’t get to see the Font at all! 😢

Our last ‘visit’ of the day was actually just a bit of a wander.  Alongside one of the universities in town we’d seen a lane that seemed to be heading out of town and so this is where we went.  It only followed the edges of the historic old town but there were some nice views on the way. 



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