A brief history of Siena (with pictures!)

Yesterday we had a historical walking tour of the city. It was molto freddo and I was wearing the wrong shoes but I tried really hard to pay attention everything that was being said so that I could impress my friends and family with my knowledge. This is a picture of me and my roommate Krissy, also a Lewis & Clark student. We live with a couple of cute Italian emptynesters about ten minutes (by bus) outside of the city walls. Our host mom, Luciana, is a very good cook, and makes chicken of all kinds, but all Roberto (our host dad) wants to eat is this sweet, yellowish bread that he keeps in a cabinet next to his chair. I don’t know too much about them yet since I’ve been too nervous to ask direct questions, as I was unsure until today if I should address them in the formal or informal manner (informal, it turns out).

Siena is seriously picturesque. I don’t know if any of you have seen Ambroggio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government (it’s located in the Palazzo Pubblico Museum), but I studied it in an art history class, and the rolling hills in the painting, which seem to be so naturalistic, are actually perfectly representative of the hills in Tuscany.

The three most important buildings in Siena (pictured in order) are probably the Duomo, or the main northern-Gothic style cathedral, the Basilica (which houses the mummified head of St. Catherine di Siena), and the Palazzo Pubblico, which was the main civic building back in the day.

Other defining features of Siena include the oldest functioning bank in the world, and, of course the Palio. The Palio is a horse race run twice every summer, consisting of three laps around the outside of the Campo. It is an inexplicably huge deal to the city’s residents, who are divided into contrada, which are essentially rival neighborhoods represented by an animal. In Siena, you only hang out with people from your contrada, and during the emotionally-charged Palio season, massive brawls between enemy contrade is not uncommon. The most recent champion of the Palio was the Rhinoceros contrada, which happens to be the contrada that my host mom belongs to. Sadly for her husband, who belongs to the Wolf contrada, contrada membership follows the maternal bloodline, so he is essentially excluded from the family during Palio season.

So there is a brief overview of Siena and its history and culture. From now on I will try to talk more about what I do on a day to day basis, which for me means taking more photos of things other than building and scenery.

A domani!

Megan