I went to Siena and Florence on the weekend of March 12-14. We had to be up and down at the piazza near our residence by 6:15am to take a bus to Siena. I took to take a nice long 3 hour nap on the bus before arriving at 9:30. It was a bit cool but soooo pretty! It's a medieval town like Todi, which I went to during my first week in Italy, but I think I like Siena a lot more because it was a little bigger and less in the middle of nowhere. Oh and also we didn't have to hike a mountain or take a lift to get to the main street like we did for Todi. haha. So here we saw San Domenico, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (which has Duccio's Maesta), Palazzo Pubblico to look at frescos by Lorenzetti, then we had free time to walk around a bit before getting on the bus again and heading to Florence.
These were protesters talking a stroll through Siena. I took this picture standing right outside the doors of San Domenico. I forgot what they were protesting exactly but I thin they were left wing supporters.
Also, in San Domenico, there is the head of St. Catherine. Her body is in Rome near that church that's to the left behind the pantheon with the elephant obelisk...I can't think of the name at the moment. But anyway you can't see her body in Rome but in Siena you can see her actual head in a reliquary box. If I'm remembering my saints correctly I think she was a bit of a nutty and people now believe she might have had slight schizophrenia but she was actually an influential figure in Christianity. Who would have thought?
San Domenico from on top another hill. Siena is another very hilly town, like Todi, and my legs were getting a major workout going up and down all over the place.
The Duomo of Siena
Inside the Duomo. Siena's colors are black and white stripes. So the entire interior looked like this and I've never seen a cathedral like it or since. It was very cool!
This is on the floor of the Duomo. It's all the animals that represent the major cities of Italy.
This is the choir room of the cathedra and there was a display of all these different hand-painted books of hymns that the choir would use to sing from. They're really big books and so detailed with hundreds of pages I just can't believe how much time and energy they must have put into each page.
For all my fellow art nerds, I couldn't resist taking a picture of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good and Bad Government. For some reason I really like the complexity of this fresco. It goes all around the room except on the fourth wall. It was really amazing to see it in person.
So after seeing lots of artwork, which I only took a few pictures here and there since I felt like I lost my steam with all the picture taking I did Tunisia, we ate lunch near Piazza del Campo then headed back toward to bus to go to Florence.
We left Siena around 4ish and got to Florence around 5 or 5:30. We checked into our hotel and ate dinner around the corner of our hotel. I think I had a pasta dish of some kind. I can't remember! But Florence is very tourist friendly and speak English almost too well for my taste. It didn't feel quite as authentically Italian as I had hoped.
Pictures of the Hotel room. This time I stayed in a triple.
Our bathroom had no shower curtain. I asked the porter (front desk receptionist) if maybe it was missing a glass panel or something because there was no shower curtain rod to even put curtain up since there was a window in the way. But he said just shower without one and don't worry about it because the floor has a drain. Needless to say I did not enjoy taking showers...
The Duomo and Baptistery. I wrote a paper on one of the 3 sets of doors that are on the baptistery. I did Ghiberti's second set of door that face the Cathedral and are 10 completely gilded panels. The ones there now are copies, and the originals are going to be put on a permanent display to preserve them. The ones you can see in this picture are Ghiberti's first set of doors with 28 panels. And opposite of those doors are Pisano's doors which also have 28 panels and were the first ones hung on the Baptistery. Incase anyone cares...
Ghiberti's 1st set of doors
And the 2nd set, which I wrote my paper one.
This is the only restored panel on display at the nearby museum.
This is Donatello's workshop which is behind the Duomo. It's the building with the bust on it.
This is Santa Croce which has a munch of tombs of famous people like Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Galileo. Of course most of mine didn't turn out so I stole ones from Wikipedia. haha
Michelangelo's Tomb
Galileo's Tomb
Machiavelli's Tomb. This is actually my own photo. It kind of turned out ok.
There's also a memorial to Dante who people felt would have also deserved a spot along the greats buried here. However he's buried in Ravenna, where he had pretty much no connections with and it makes no sense at all why he's there. But I did get to see his tomb. Looks nice at least.
After viewer a bunch of artwork that day we ended with a visit to the Accademia which is where Michelangelo's David is displayed. You weren't a loud to take pictures. But honestly you can find pictures of it all over the internet anyway. There's not much in the Accedemia other than the David. It used to be a workshop for sculptures and on a side there is a long room filled with plaster casts and busts and all sorts of interesting sculptures that were marked up and used as learning tools to create copies and learn how to sculpt. It was really interesting to see them. Also as you walk into the Accademia towards David there are unfinished works of Michelangelo (shocker), and these are some of the 12 prophets he was suppose to sculpt. I actually really loved these because it's like going to visit Michelangelo's shop as if he's still alive and working and seeing his process and how he approaches each piece differently. The David is remarkable and mind blowing but I was really intrigued by the unfinished works because it shows you what you can't otherwise fully appreciate about how he can get to a finished product such as the David where he's got an amazing ability to show softness of the skin carved out of marble. I could talk about it forever but it's worth seeing, and don't just walk by it, you have to read it for awhile. Trust me it's worth the frustration of getting through the crowd to be up close.
So after the Accademia we were free to wander around and of course you'll end up at the leather markets one way or another. I took pictures but it doesn't do it justice. It's crazy busy and everyone wants to sell you their crap for "a veddy good price". Florence at night is actually fun and lively and there's shops all over and restaurants to eat at anyway.
The next day we checked out of the hotel and visited a few insignificant places before arriving at the Uffizi for our 11am appointment. Our professor apparently knew someone so we got in for free in the back door and had to walk through side rooms before we arrived in the museum. So I have no idea where the real entrance is. I loved the Uffizi, of course. It had tons of key works from a bunch of different time periods. It would take forever to look through it but obviously it's worth a tour guide to weed out the good stuff.
To the far right is the edge of the Uffizi. It's a horse-shoe shaped building kind of. This is where the David was originally suppose to be and it was unveiled here when first shown in public. Although it's a direct copy and accurate in size, it looks a lot smaller when standing outside. Which was surprising.
This is the view of the canal from inside the Uffizi
After the Uffizi we had time for lunch so he went down to cross the bridge in the picture above.
The building with the window facing the bridge, on the left, is the window I took the picture from of the canal.
This guy was hanging out on the sidewalk as we passed by and I couldn't resist taking a picture. Totally made my day. haha.
After lunch we went to a few other places: The Brancacci Chapel and Santa Maria Novella, which is pictured below.
So that was pretty much it for my Siena / Florence trip. I can't remember too many details since it was a month ago but really it was heavily loaded with visits to churches and museums and frescos, frescos, frescos. I did love it, though and it was nice to be in a city that's small enough to walk the full width of in only about 45 minutes at a leisurely pace. The amount of artwork to see will make your eyes glaze over, that's for sure. But very worth it!
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