Okay so in this blog, I will explain the lovely city of Siena which is well known for being one of the first city to build it’s buildings with the use of bricks and clay (as most of the other cities would use sand-stone or other types of earlier forms of rocks to form structures. This city also has an unusual piazza (the first photo) which is shaped with a large dip that curves downwards and also has a large ring that encompasses around it. The purpose of this ring that circles the piazza is that the city would host (and still to this day) an event once a year, where the city held a race with 17 “contrade of Siena” (each is named after an animal or symbol and each with its own long history and complicated set of heraldic and semi-mythological associations) to win the challenge and represent for it’s neighborhood.
These districts (seen in photos 2 and 3) were set up in the Middle Ages in order to supply troops to the many military companies that were hired to defend Siena as it fought to defend its independence from Florence and other nearby city states. As time has gone by, the contrada have lost their administrative and military functions and have instead become simply areas of localized patriotism, held together by the emotions and sense of civic pride of the residents. Their roles have broadened so that every important event – baptisms, deaths, marriages, church holidays, victories at the piazza, even wine or food festivals – is celebrated only within one’s own contrada.
The city also has many beautiful churches and galleries which detail some pretty amazing art work. In the fourth photo, you can see one of the massive churches in the city and when you go inside it is absolutely amazing how (and I kid you not) every single piece of the space used in the building (as can be seen with the floor and the ceiling) has some form of art designed within it.
Furthermore, as can be seen with the last two pictures, we got the opportunity to see where the church was originally supposed to be (as they started to build part of the wall) but realized they wanted to move the church to the other side of the street. Now they use it as a observation deck where, as can be seen with the very last photo, takes a viewing of the whole city (which I got to go up on top of).