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| Arriving at our apartment with our mountain of baggage. Up and over and down and up again. So many short sharp hills. |
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| First things first - Finn constructs a sock tree with over a weeks worth of washing to hang out. |
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| View from our garden. 'Our garden' which consisted of a bay tree, a lawn, a rose bush, and a huge lemon verbena. The church bells woke us every morning at 7.30. |
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| The town's water supply. |
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| The water supply facade. |
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| Looking up the stormy hill towards the cathedral. |
The cathedral was amazing. Really amazing. Even after visiting a million and something churches, this one was a stunner. In particular it's stripy exterior in black, white, and pink, and it's floor. Wow. The floor was marble inlay in a whole new style - like a great big inlaid marble comic strip of the bible, with cartoon graphics and speech bubbles in latin. It was awesome.
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| Woman, not sure who, with cupids holding up her thoughts. |
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| A worried woman, running with her speech bubble held aloft. |
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| Detail of a circle of children climbing a great geometric inlay ring. |
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| Detail from the execution of the innocents. The dead babies piling up under the executioners feet reminded me a lot of Sendak characters. |
This cathedral is really the main sight in Siena, although the city itself is also really nice, so steep and hilly. The cathedral complex also includes a baptistry, built into the hill under the cathedral building and under the crypt; and a museum from where you can climb up the never-realised nave wall that stands alone to the side of the cathedral.
The climb is no easy matter, mind. There's one tight-ish spiral staircase to get to the first level (where the guy is standing taking a photo in my photo), then a second, super tight spiral up to the top. By the time you get there, it really does pay to hold the railings you're so dizzy. Passing people coming down is near impossible, I managed to just squeeze past a super slim woman by agreeing to climb around her on the inside of the spiral while she stopped and pressed herself against the outside wall. It was pretty much a full body hug.
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| The end wall of the never-realised nave. If this extension had gone ahead the cathedral would have been epically massive. |
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| View across the city to the rolling Tuscan fields beyond. |
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| Looking back to the cathedral's striped dome and bell tower from 'the wall'. |
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| Looking the other way - that's Siena's main town square, built into the hill, it's shaped like a scallop sloping down to the town hall with the bell tower. |
After climbing down again our stomachs were so twisted around and all topsy turvy, we both felt a little ill and unsettled for the rest of the afternoon.
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| And back down to earth, thank goodness. |
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| An extremely busy, intricately carved facade. |
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On our first day with the hire car we decided to take a scenic route to some of the near-ish-by hill towns, easing Finn back into crazy Italy driving. We did a little loop, from Siena south to a cluster of medieval villages. I didn't take any photos, but the countryside we drove through really was very pretty - rolling green fields of mystery crops, olives, and grapes, and houses and driveways ringed by cypresses. Apparently this is the area they come to film Italian car commercials.
Montepulciano
Famous for recently being a location for part of the Twilight film series - the bar we had coffee and pastries in had a wall decorated with photos from the shoot.
Pienza
Famous for pecorino cheese. Yum.
Montalcino
Situated on top of a hill, like most of these towns are - strategic vantage point and all that, by the time we got here the storm which had been gathering around us since mid-morning was tearing through, carrying all unsecured items - rubbish bins, signage, tree branches - with it. Finn made like a Roman statue and twisted.
Bagno Vignoni
Last on the day's itinerary was this sweet little Roman spa town, where the storm had no breath. Sadly we'd just missed the public geothermal pools, and this one pictured is no longer open to the public. Warm as a bath though, you can just see where it's all bubbling up to the right in the photo. But now that we knew we were in a geothermal area, we were to make it our mission to find more such relaxing treats.
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Day 2 in our wee fiat and we headed north to one of Tuscany's 'must see's and it's neighbour.
San Gimignano
City of towers. Towers apparently constructed by feuding families in real mine's bigger than your's style. Gutters and grass banks not long in the sun were still piled with mounds of hail when we arrived in San Gimignano after a hell of a storm the night before, but it had broken to a perfectly clear bright day. The view from the top of the tower we climbed - the tallest one remaining - went for miles, showing up the snow-topped mountains running down the centre of Italy. The museo civico (whose tower we climbed) is home to a great fresco cycle by Memmo di Filippuccio - a room lined with frescoes depicting the 'wrong' and the 'right' choices to be made in matters of love. On one wall there's a bag of money, prostitutes, a public beating, and sad parents... On another there's a marriage, a bath, and bedtime with the misses. Nice.
Volterra
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| The old town watchtower, now a state prison watchtower. |
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| Etruscan arch - maybe possibly where Romans got the idea of using a keystone. |
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| Wedding party outside the town hall. |
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Day 3
Assisi
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| Houses built along lanes, both maintaing the shape of a Roman amphitheatre. |
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| Pretty in pink Roman archway. |
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| Low flying cloud over the valley floor. |
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| Roman temple facade. |
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| St. Francis's basilica. |
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| Sunset from the hermitage. |
Assisi we loved. Most places were charming, but Assisi the most lovely. The pink limestone particularly won our hearts. (Not long now till we'll be coming home to our own pink house!)
The basilica, despite Francis's conversion to poverty and preachings of the simple life, was opulent, as you'd expect a catholic basilica to be. The hermitage on the other hand, was not. It was simple and pokey - seemingly built around a series of tight tunnels and tiny caves, with a strong connection to the forrest-covered hills it's snuggly tucked into.
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Day 4 - the day we found hot pools, just outside of Saturnia.
Hot water shooting out of a hole in a hill, these terraced pools were a relaxing treat indeed, even if we did smell a bit off for the rest of the day.
Pitigliano
A real cliff-top town, we stopped only quickly to take in the view.
Civita
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| Access to Civita is across the valley on this walkway/narrow road. |
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| Etruscan caves now local storehouses. |
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| Etruscan tunnel under the town. |
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| Archway cut by Etruscans 2500 years ago. |
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| One of Finn's favourite 3-wheeled 50cc 'trucks' heading down the steps to the path across the valley. |
Civita is a medieval town built on a tuft of crumbling dirt. It used to be part of a hilly range connecting it to it's neighbour Bagnoregio, but now there is a gaping big chasm between Civita and anywhere else.
It was a fun filled week, each day ending in satisfied exhaustion, and quite often a barbecue. Finn did great driving, with only one or two reminders from the navigator-passanger that he is not Italian (i.e. so, no overtaking on blind corners), and we got everywhere and home again every night so the navigating can't have been too bad. Finding our way home was the most difficult part - we really needed a wider Siena map, not just the old bit overlaid with a central Italy road map. But we managed, a few times around the same roundabout is no big deal really.
2 January 2012
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