Tag Archives: Travel

Intermission (Impossible): Siena

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Monday 19 May 2025 – Warning! Long Post Alert! Really long!!

I have to try to sum up Siena as we’ve seen it for the last couple of days, which is pretty much an impossible task. Actually, for a tourist only here for two days (for that’s what we are, before going back to becoming travellers tomorrow), there are relatively few highlights to hit: the Duomo, of course; the Campo (the main square); some notable churches; and the general scenery. Once you actually visit any of these tick-box items, though, you are deluged with all sorts of astonishing images. I’ve taken literally hundreds of photos, and obviously can’t bore you with all of them. I’ll try to summarise.

Our hotel, the Chiusarelli, is in a decent location, a few minutes walk from the centre of the old city.  I’ve mentioned its eccentricities, which also extend to decor.

Our room, while not particularly large, is comfortable enough. Unlike most hotel rooms we’ve come across so far (and not, I may add, just in Italy), it has a sufficiency of charging points for the various devices we use – camera, phones, activity monitor, backup drive, tablet – and some of these are usb-c, which is outrageously modern and very welcome. The breakfasts

are ample and feature Twining’s finest Earl Grey, so it has been a happy base from which to ramble. We’ve had a guided tour with the somewhat theatrical Serena, and also been for our own walks. Obviously. Here, in no particular order, are some of the things we’ve learned and some of the things we’ve seen.

Siena is built upon three hills. The practical upshot of this for us tourists is that to get anywhere involves toiling up really quite steep slopes. But for the original medieval settlers, it had a more significant problem – lack of water. Being on the top of hills meant that, unlike its dreaded rival Florence, a river didn’t run through it. It took some significant medieval engineering to create a series of underground aqueducts, 25km in length, called bottini. These tapped into underground springs and rainwater run-off, and were Siena’s principal source of water until the 20th century. There’s a fountain in the Campo, the Fonte Gaia, built to express gratitude for the water. It’s not impressive, like the Trevi jobbie in Rome, there are just a couple of she-wolves dribbling water,

but it represents something terrifically important for the locals.

The Campo itself, yesterday, was not the unencumbered place whose photo I shared the other day, oh no. All over the centre of Siena, barricades were being set up

and equipment rolled out

in preparation for the arrival, yesterday afternoon, of the Giro d’Italia, the Italian equivalent of the Tour de France.  As the day progressed, crowds began to build up

and, at around 5pm the circus arrived, unwatched by me, since I was

making myself useful. Jane watched on TV as the cyclists made their way into town and round the Campo to the finish. Apparently it was quite exciting.

The Campo has been used for racing of quite a different sort – horse racing, believe it or not. Twice a year, the outer edge of the Campo is covered in sand and 10 horses are raced for three laps, a process that takes just over a minute. But it’s a terrifically important minute, and the running of these races continues a tradition started, in Siena at least, in 1633 (apparently, this kind of lunacy has been going on in various other places since the middle ages, would you believe). The race, and the parades and other pageantry that precede it, is called “Il Palio“. Is it popular with the locals? You bet! This is a photo I got from a pamphlet on the Palio, showing the Campo as the race is running.

Why is it so important to the locals? This comes down to the way the city is divided into “contrade” – neighbourhoods. There are 17 in total and each horse represents a “neigh”bourhood. Only ten horses run each time; in the next Palio, the seven neighbourhoods which didn’t participate get a place as of right, and the other three places are allocated by lot. Horses are allocated by a draw, and to be the winning jockey is very important for the inter-neighbourhood rivalries.

Each neighbourhood has its own flag on which is represented its animal. The choice of animal is non-intuitive. One might expect lions, or tigers, but what you get is the rhino, the owl, the silkworm, the snail and other unlikely candidates.  Every contrada has its own museum, church, fountain and baptismal font, and if you look carefully, you can see the badges of different contrade on either side of a boundary.

Eagle on the left, Forest (featuring a rhino!) on the right

The flags are sold everywhere for tourists to buy;

one can buy individual flags or one with all of the insignia on it.

If I understand it correctly, the distinction between neighbourhoods extends even to the way the street lamps are mounted, on “braceletti”

though it would appear that there are also special braceletti, too.

Siena was an important city in medieval Europe, and its historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which contains several buildings from the 13th and 14th centuries. The city is famous for its cuisine, art, museums, medieval cityscape and, of course, the Palio. According to local legend, Siena was founded by Senius and Aschius, two sons of Remus and thus nephews of Romulus, after whom Rome was named. Supposedly after their father’s murder by Romulus, they fled Rome, taking with them the statue of the she-wolf suckling the infants (Capitoline Wolf), thus appropriating that symbol for the town. You can see it all over the place; for example on the wall of the courtyard inside the Palazzo Pubblico, the town hall – the building with the tall tower (the Mangia Tower) on the Campo.

You can also see the she-wolf represented on the floor of the Duomo, so now that I’ve exhausted you with talk of history and such, let me show you some images from our tour of the cathedral. It took us a little time to work out how to get in, and in fact our guide, Serena, gave us the best info. We bought the inclusive ticket, for €16 apiece, which got us into the four main bits of this vast complex – the cathedral itself, the baptistry, an area called the crypt even though it isn’t one, and the “panorama”. Fixated as I am with aerial shots of places, we started with the panorama, which you can get to via (loads of bloody steps and) a beautiful arch.

This takes you into a courtyard of which one wall overlooks the Duomo from the eastern side.

This courtyard immediately made me think that it was once a church; in fact it was going to be a church, to expand the Duomo to be bigger than that thing the bastard Florentines have. It was never completed as the pillars you can see to left and right wouldn’t have been able to bear the weight of any roof. So now it’s a car park. But it’s a car park overlooked by a very tall wall, which one can climb; entry is via the museum, the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.  An internal staircase and a couple of very narrow spiral staircases take you up to the lower

and then the upper level, officially called the Facciatone, from which vantage point the view of the Duomo is spectacular.

Because of the narrowness of the spiral staircases, the traffic up and down is closely monitored and carefully controlled; but, amazingly, we were virtually the only people there at the time we climbed it – it was more crowded later. You also get great views over the city and surrounding areas.

Coming down, you’re led through the museum, which has several museumish rooms with examples of embroidery

and paintings an’ that.

As you can tell, I’m not particularly moved by this kind of art. But awaiting me was a room with material in it which I did find engaging.

In the central display cases were books of ancient music – gregorian chants, written out on vellum and gloriously illuminated.

Around the walls were pictures on what appeared to be paper. We asked an attendant, who told us that they were drawings of the pictures made in marble on the floor of the Duomo. Indeed, there was one of the entire floor plan

with each marble picture carefully drawn.

Elsewhere, there were individual pictures of each of the tableaux.

This is a representation of the she-wolf, and it’s surrounded by the representations of other cities – Pisa, Lucca, Viterbo and so on. Remember this for later.

The way out takes you past a gallery of statues with a lovely representation of the rose window from the Duomo

and the exit is via the church of St. Nicholas,

which is also the gift shop – with possibly the ritziest gift shop ceiling on the planet.

Ritzy ceilings are a key feature in the baptistry, which is back through that arch and down a whole load of steps. Going inside made me catch my breath.

There are all sorts of beautiful details, but the fresco-painted ceilings are, for me, the most amazing aspect.

 

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that I have many more photos, but I hope these give you the basic idea. The bottom right-hand photo there is painted on the inside of a dome. Hold that thought….

Before going into the Duomo itself, we visited something inaccurately called the Crypt.  It’s not a crypt, it has no corpses in it. It was once a church, or perhaps the entry into the cathedral of the time, or maybe a meeting place – whatever, it was built on a level below the current Duomo, which was simply piled on top of it. No-one knew about this earlier space until in 1999 during renovations, workmen accidentally broke through a wall and found something painted blue. Careful research revealed this room, dating from the 1200s, whose walls were completely covered in frescoes which have been preserved by it being filled with debris in the 1300s, buried and forgotten. The interior was excavated – carefully, because of the not inconsierable bulk of the Duomo above, which necessitated special reinforcing to be put in place. And the result is a phenomenal display of frescoes telling biblical and Christian stories.

You can see the steel frame used to support the Duomo above,

and, on one wall,

lo! the outside of the dome of the baptistry. This has to be one of the most atmospheric places we have ever visited.

The final piece was, of course, a visit inside the Duomo itself.

This is the rose window reproduced in the statue gallery in the museum

 

As I said earlier, the floor is covered in tableaux made in marble. They are marblous!

and, of course, there’s the she-wolf.

There was nothing for it after all of this visual overload but to go for a Nice Lunch.  Heading back to the hotel afterwards for a Nice Lie-Down, we managed to do a key piece of shopping

which should stand us in good stead for the remainder of our walking.

Which restarts tomorrow.  We have some 21km to walk to Lucignano d’Arbia. We’ve had a fabulous time in Siena, and it’s been wonderful having the chance to draw breath and do the laundry – these things are important, y’know – but it will equally be nice to get underway again as we head to Rome. I hope you’ll accompany us through the medium of these pages.

Day 6 – Monteriggioni to Siena – Long but not too hard

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Saturday 17 May 2025 – We were up not with the lark but with the blackbird, which started singing shortly before our alarm was due to go off at 05:30. We took a prompt breakfast in order to get out quickly, since the official distance of 20km made this one of the longer days since we started out from Altopascio. (I’ve noted before that I feel this route has been tougher than the Camino Francés that we did 18 months ago. Actually, on the Camino, we typically covered longer distances then; but the Via (so far) has been much more hilly, which has made the days tougher.)

The hotel is definitely posh. You can tell because it actually offered hot food at breakfast, so I was able to construct a passable imitation of a bacon butty to go with my cup of Twining’s finest Earl Grey.

Then it was time to head off across the fields to rejoin the Via. The lowering mass of Monteriggioni squats atop a hill; once we got to the foot of the hill we started up really quite a steep path.

At its steepest, just before the gate into the fortress,

I measured the slope as 14.5°

which a short conversation with ChatGPT established is actually slightly steeper than 1 in 4. Bloody steep, in short. Although we had only covered around 4km by the time we passed through the gate, we felt we’d earned a coffee stop. While Jane and Caroline relaxed, I popped over the road and whizzed the drone up for a quick photo of the whole place.

You can see how tiny it is.

After our coffee, we bade farewell to Monteriggioni

and moved on

working our way steadily towards our goal – Siena, the end of this section of the Via. The S-cape app described today’s walk as short, easy and unencumbered by any “road houses”, i.e. coffee stops. It was wrong on two of the three counts: our total distance for the day was 24.5km (only Day 1 was longer) and there were actually a couple of rest stops along the way, one of which was delightful (see later).

As before, the going was varied – some tarmac, some dirt road and some tracks.

There were stretches where balletic leaps across muddy patches were required, or where the going underfoot was pretty rocky.

Muddiness and rocks were, however, no barrier for some of the lunatic fringe who came past us.

The Powers That Be clearly wanted to make sure that we stayed on track;

there are no fewer than five waymarks in this picture.

We passed a reference to the Camino de Santiago

a helpful household’s support for passing pilgrims

Just a tap through the wall, and a notice that the water is OK for drinking

and some nice roadside shrines.

For much of the route, the countryside, while pleasant and rural, was otherwise unremarkable

though there were patches where poppies had taken over; at one point they almost seemed to form a river.

We took a rest in order to eat our hotel-provided sandwiches on a convenient bench overlooking a monument

which, its info board told us, was erected after the area, which had originally been a swamp, had been drained; the monument was a tribute to man’s ability to shape nature. The swamp might have been cleared, but the mosquitoes hadn’t noticed.

One falls to meditating on the long stretches of road when not much else is happening. I saw this sign

which had flashing lights and warned that there were pedestrians in the road, and wondered how the hell did they know we were there?

We passed another sign, this one telling us that there was a “punta ristoro” in a couple of kilometres, which, given the S-cape info, was unexpected. Between us and it were a couple of castles:

Castello della Chiocciola, the origins of which are possibly from the 14th century, but which certainly was mentioned in despatches in 1555 when it played a part in the battle which ended in the fall of Siena; and Castello di Villa, a medieval building which was apparently historically important for pilgrims on the Via Francigena. This takes its name from (or possibly gives it to) the local area, which has a few houses which look to have been recently spiffed up, a sort of village green to give you an idea of its personality

and – eventually – the “punto ristoro”, which describes itself as a punto sosta – a place of sustenance.

“Extension” round the back

It’s a delightful place, offering all kinds of goodies – various foods including cakes, pastries, eggs and fruit – coffee or tea, and a place to sit and rest. No money is demanded; the place runs off donations, and has a very genial atmosphere.  There are many nice touches

and a lovely vegetable garden round the back.

Informal as it seemed, it did appear that the place also operated as a B&B; all slightly eccentric and utterly charming. Of course we took a break there.

Slightly further along, there was an Agriturismo place, Casalino 18, offering lunch-time wine-tasting, sandwiches and juices – another rest stop that had escaped the notice of S-cape.

Shortly after that, we apparently reached SIena!

Ah. No. Bugger. Still a few kilometres to go. We ploughed on. At least we only had a few kilometres to go; other destinations were much further away.

The pleasantly unvarying rural scenery gave way to a vista worth a photo

and… had we really reached Siena?

Sadly, not quite – still a couple of kilometres to go. That lovely view was basically the hill we then had to climb to get to the city proper.  But we did get there, walking through increasingly urban surroundings until we reached a very obvious entry point to the historic city.

This is the gate through which pilgrims traditionally enter the city. We were a bit tired and frazzled by this stage, so couldn’t quite be arsed to do this; but we did go through another walled archway

which, eagle-eyed readers will notice, sports the Medici coat of arms, and into the old city proper.

and eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, to our hotel,

the very elegant and slightly eccentric Hotel Chiusarelli. It’s a nice place, and we were courteously welcomed, but the way they’ve set the rooms out is odd, to say the least. Our room was no. 24, which was on the top floor (up 50 steps!). Caroline’s, no.35, was along a corridor and down some stairs. Our bags had arrived and (praise be!) been put in our rooms, and Lorenzo and Barbara on reception made sure that we could find our way through their mini labyrinth to our rooms.

Although the walk hadn’t been as arduous as those on some of the other days, we were still in need of a rest, and so it was a couple of hours later that we ventured out for a look at Siena – my first, as I’ve never been here before. We had hoped to get into the cathedral, the Duomo, but, sadly, had left it too late. By telling us that its closing time was 7pm, Google had traduced us – it closed at 5.30, so we had to make do with seeing it in its magnificant, city-dominating, setting

before taking a look at the baptistry

and the facade.

Opposite the Duomo is the church of Santa Maria della Scala, which has a breathtaking interior, with a stunning fresco behind the altar.

We also visited the main square of the city, the Campo di Siena

before heading back to the hotel for an evening meal in their restaurant. The food was excellent, but we discovered another eccentricity, in that they don’t serve spirits, so a G&T with the meal was not an option. However, it was a lovely meal and a chance for final conversation with Caroline before we bade her farewell; she has to travel home tomorrow, and even a friendship as deep as ours doesn’t extend to getting up at sparrow fart simply to say goodbye at 6.30am. (Stop Press: we have learned that she made it home in good order.)

We now have two whole days at leisure in Siena before we head off on the next segment of the Via. Our time includes a guided tour and we hope to get inside the Duomo, so, with good luck and a following tide I should be able to bring you more information about and photos of this splendid city. Stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

 

Day 5 – Colle to Monteriggioni – Adventures beside the river

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Friday 16 May 2025 – Today was the penultimate day of the first chunk of our walk to Rome. This section ends in Siena, which we should, all other things being equal, reach tomorrow. Today, the target was Monteriggioni. Of the route, our S-cape app rhapsodised once more: “Prepare yourself for one of the most beautiful sections of the Via Francigena, a meditative route…”. “Meditative” could possibly mean “dull”, in that meditation is the best way to work through a boring stretch. Anyway, the route was not dull; but the S-cape app didn’t quite prepare us for the day’s walk with useful information.

Breakfast was only available from 8am, so we got there promptly. The food on offer was perfectly fine – standard Italian hotel breakfast fare, meaning yoghurt, cereals, juices, plentiful bread and pastries, cheese and meats, and a limited selection of fruit. But there was Twining’s finest Earl Grey on offer, which is always a good thing in our books.

We started off on basically the route that I had used to get the milk yesterday, which leads down That Ramp, past a good view over the newer parts of town.

When we got down to the bottom of the ramp, we found that a market had, it seemed, taken over the whole town.

There were stalls everywhere.

The route of the Via Francigena through the outskirts of the town was quite complicated. How those pilgrims managed not to lose their way round all those apartment blocks is a mystery to me because I suppose they didn’t have Google Maps to help them.

We left the town on the road, but soon diverted away from it and found ourselves on a woodland path with the sounds of rushing water to our left. Soon, the source of the sound became clear; the path ran beside the river Elsa.  It was, indeed, a delightful walk, past several attractive cascades

At times we had to cross the river, which The Powers That Be had enabled by rope bridges. Well, rope, anyway.

Some of these crossings were really very interesting – slippery stones (made more slippery by overnight rain) with quite substantial gaps between them – but we made it intact over all the crossings. We felt that some mention might have been made of these crossings in the S-cape app, to prepare us. Some of the bridges were a little less ambitious, mind.

We passed an intriguing memorial stone, which is getting quite overgrown.

The stone is in memoriam Vitalie Michitcin, and carries, translated into Italian, the immortal line penned by Isaac Asimov, the science (fact and) fiction writer, in his Foundation trilogy: “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”. This made me wonder whether Vitalie’s end came about through domestic violence. I can’t find any references to explain it in more detail, I’m afraid.

The path was clear, albeit muddy and slippery in places, and every so often went steeply up and down, typically with steps chunky enough to put a strain on the knees of your correspondent.

There was a waterfall at the head of the series of cascades

although there was a bit of a torrent above it as the river passed under the road at Gracciano dell’Elsa, where we exited the Parca Fluvial and took up on an opportunity for a coffee stop.  We had only done about 6km, but the excitement level had been quite intense at times.

We left Gracciano on the road, but again soon turned off on to paths of varying quality. We passed an intriguing statue, possibly of a crane,

though it didn’t look robust enough actually to lift anything. We also passed what was once an ancient Etruscan thermal bath

which was allegedly downstream from a mill, but no sign could be seen of that.

Mostly, the path was OK, and the countryside very pleasant.

Every so often, though, it turned feral

and showed evidence that mountain bikers made use of it,

though, frankly, how they managed MTBs on some of the stretches is beyond me.

These were rocky, steep and slippery in places – another aspect that the rhapsodising S-cape app had failed to prepare us for.

One thing it had prepared us for was a viewpoint that gave us our first sight of Monteriggioni. And it’s quite an arresting sight.

Our walk today would not take us quite all the way there, but we shall walk through it tomorrow as we follow the Via Francigena. By this stage we had reached a small place called Abbadia a Isola, a curious little place, with some old buildings which used once to belong to an Abbey.

We looked into the church, which was simple

but which had some nice frescoes, some possibly reaching as far back as the 16th century.

It has to be said, though, that our main object of interest was a restaurant our information gave us to believe was on the site. Since the time was approaching 2pm by this stage, we decided we should lunch here if possible, as leaving it until we reached our hotel might be too late.

We stumbled around a bit and eventually found the restaurant. It’s called Futura, and it’s a bizarre sort of place. The food we had was delicious, but the decor is very strange, with weird modernistic pictures on the walls.

Very odd decor in the loo

The service we had was very courteous and professional, but also somehow pretentious. Its website proclaims “Our Italian Cuisine of Tomorrow”, which definitely sounds pretentious to me. Jane and I don’t drink wine any more, preferring gin-and-tonic to go with meals, so I asked our friendly but po-faced host if he had gin. He said yes, so we asked for gin and tonics. Alas, he said, they had no tonic. One wonders what sort of thinking drives an organisation to be able to provide gin but not tonic. If that’s Italian Cuisine Of Tomorrow, I want no part of it. So, although the food really was very good, it didn’t count as a Nice Lunch, which is a bit of a shame.

All that remained of the day’s walk was to get to our hotel, Il Piccolo Castello, which is quite posh.

We discovered that, in taking lunch, we’d made a tactical error, as our arrangement for the hotel was half board. We certainly didn’t want dinner as well as the lunch we’d just eaten, so Jane negotiated with Bianca, the very helpful lady on reception, who got her boss to agree that we could take a picnic lunch with us tomorrow instead.

Since we were less than 2km from the very intriguiing-looking Monteriggioni, we thought it would be worth exploring. Bianca told us that a taxi would have to come from Siena and cost a fortune, but arranged for someone to take us there in the hotel minibus, which was very helpful of her. Accordingly, we were deposited just outside the walls and made our way in through the imposing gate.

Jane had worked out that Monteriggioni is quite small, but it’s actually tiny – it’s really just a fortress, not a town at all. Historically it occupies its undoubtedly strong strategic position as a defense against possible incurson from the dastardly Florentines, so its original purpose was purely military. When we walked in one side of the place, we could actually see right through to the other side.

It’s very photogenic, with an attractive main square with cafes and restaurants, and a lot of small artsanal gift shops.

The church is small but handsome

and quite plain inside.

It’s possible to walk on parts of the walls, which gives a bit of an overview of the place.

This view is taken from the walls above one entry gate, and you can clearly see the gate at the other side

It’s really an open air museum, not a town or village. It’s lovely that it’s been so well preserved, but it somehow feels a bit odd. Anyway, we shall walk through it again tomorrow, once we have climbed the 90 or so metres up the path that leads to it.

This will be the start of a long day, as we will have over 20km to cover – and no coffee stops! As I wrote earlier, reaching Siena will mark the end of this section and we will sadly have to bid farewell to Caroline as she heads back to the UK after what has actually been quite a strenuous week – the route so far has been much tougher than any of us had anticipated.

Anyway, we have to get to Siena first. Wish us luck!