We love Siena!

On Wednesday, we spent the day in Siena, about an hour and a half from Villa Fabbroni. The morning Tuscan fog had not yet lifted by the time we arrived and I was very underdressed in a light t-shirt. Fortunately, there was a huge market happening there, so I seized the opportunity to do some sweater shopping. I found an great long black flowy mohair sweater that served me perfectly that chilly morning.

Siena is a medieval walled city that is charming and quaint yet lively and relevant as it is home to the University of Siena and has many of the usual characteristics of being a college town. Also, it is home to the Palio, a 90 second horse race that happens twice each summer - once in July and once in August. The race has been a tradition in Siena for hundreds of years, yet still draws enormous crowds and invokes highly competitive passion in its citizens. The race happens in the center of town in Piazza del Campo (or just Il Campo), a huge D-shaped area surrounded by tall medieval buildings.

While in Siena, it's easy to get lost in the endless maze of narrow streets, steep tunnels, and dark alleys - nothing like a typical grid layout so familiar in modern U.S. cities. However, one only needs to know how to get back to Il Campo, as everything within the walls literally centers around it. We walked for hours through the city, stopping for espressos, lunch, and gelato along the way.

We then visited the Duomo, which was spectacular. The exterior boasts an astonishing facade, dense with elaborate sculpture and colored in black & white, the main colors in the Siena flag.



The inside is floored by stunning mosaics, walled with breathtaking paintings, and filled with marble sculptures, including some by Michaelangelo. And then there was a museum! We toured both the Duomo and the museum, a highlight of the latter being a climb up an extremely narrow winding staircase to the tower, where we got an expansive panoramic view of the burnt orange rooftops of the city and the Tuscan countryside beyond.





We walked a little more, stopping in to a salumeria that almost knocked us over by its aroma. For fans of italian sausage and cheese, this was a mecca. We bought a big bottle of Moretti and a couple of lemon cookies. The owner kindly gave us some plastic cups and allowed us to drink our beer in front of his store. A few minutes later, he came outside and gave this delicious and generous snack:



We wound down the day at Il Campo, where the brick and stone was warm from the day's sun. The crowd was a blend of tourists and skinny-jean college hipsters. We joked that it looked like a medieval quad, with only the surrounding architecture differentiating it from any ordinary college campus. Still, the energy of the place was amazing and Siena officially became one of our favorite places in Italy.