Seina and Lucignano.

4-12-11 PERGO: Today we drove west to Siena and found parking just inside the old town. We walked several blocks through neighborhoods of more stone houses, here the color is that one you liked in the big Crayola box, ‘burnt siena’, brownish orange, like John Boehner’s face. We turned a corner into a piazza and were confronted with an incredibly ornate, huge, white and pink marble cathedral. It is magnificent, on the inside as well as out. The floors, the walls, the windows, the dome, the library, the ceilings all compete for your attention. The pix just hint at it all.

A few block away is the main square, Piazza del Campo, a vast brick, sloping space surrounded by a sandstone roadway where they have an annual horse race, hard to believe, for me. There is a tower, town hall, public buildings and an ornate marble fountain, Fountain of Joy.

We had lunch off the big piazza after more walk around and by mid-afternoon we found the car and went back, stopping at a little town, Lucignano. A current indie movie, ‘Certified Copy’ was shot here, in this piazza. They built a phony fountain for the movie, now gone.

We had an excellent and fancy dinner back at La Corte dei Papi. Roma tomorrow.


Outside breakfast at La Corte dei Papi.

Color of Siena.

Duomo with gingerbread and stripes.

Duomo, could a zebra just disappear in here?

Piazza del Campo with tower.

Piazza del Campo. Duomo in the backround.

Lucignano, not quite as impressive a piazza.