Intoxicated by (and in) Siena

Siena is simply beautiful. The city centre around the Campo is a glorious jumble of twisting medieval streets, cobbles and bustle - the sort of bustle that is created by people and rarely interrupted by vehicles which makes for a refreshing change.

The city's heart is the Campo; the enormous, fan-shaped piazza that plays host to Siena's famous Palio. It is lined with attractive pavement cafes with the most expensive drinks in town and the best views. Atmospheric and very, very special.

The Campo is the home of the Palazzo Pubblico and Torre del Mangia. The frescoes of the Palazzo are some of the finest Gothic pieces in Italy while the Torre offers magnificent views of the city and beyond.

The Blonde and I were suffering church fatigue and didn't get any further than the outside of Siena's mighty Duomo and Campanile. Dating back to 1215, the marble clad cathedral still has unfinished wings and extensions (bits started sliding down hillsides and then nearly half the population succumbed to the Black Death reducing the need for more seating space) and is well worth a visit.

Quick Tips:

It seems that many people visit Siena on day trips from elsewhere in Tuscany. As a result, the city empties in the evening and is restored to the residents. If you can fit it into your itinerary, stay the night. Piecing together the parts I can remember, we had a wonderful evening, which included a rowdy parade with a variety of countries depicted in less than flattering ways, a delicious meal, more drinks than might be considered appropriate in polite circles, and a strange journey back to the hotel that involved white statues and a marble hallway.

Lose yourself in the streets and alleyways; there are a wide range of shops selling local pottery and all those delicious Italian sausages, breads and fruits. Siena is also a fine place to join in the passeggiata. The main accepted route seemed to be down Banchi di Sopra, which joins the Piazza Matteotti and the Campo and is as close as Siena gets to a main thoroughfare. This is also the street in which to indulge in clothes-oriented window-shopping.

Best Way To Get Around:

The walled centre of Siena seems largely inaccessible to traffic although most of it is not strictly pedestrianised despite first impressions. The streets to the north, around Piazza Matteotti, are about as far in as I would have risked in a car.

We arrived in Siena by rail from Florence. Rail travel is very economical in Italy (?10.80 for a single) and all the trains we used were punctual and clean. We also found the timetables to be easily understood without a command of Italian. Siena's station is a few kilometres outside of the city centre but it is well served by bus services. Buy your bus tickets inside the station - the staff at the counter spoke good English and was helpful. If you cross the road opposite the station entrance a bus heading for the centre of town will happen along pretty soon. There are also a few taxis floating around if you?ve had it with public transport.

To enjoy Siena one needs stout shoes - the city is built on a series of hills and any exploring will feature some significant inclines or steps or both. What better way to work off that big lunch?

When in Siena, be very wary of maps. What seems like a "we don’t need a taxi, the hotel’s just there" situation is more likely to be an ordeal of blind alleys, steep descents and thigh-straining climbs. There is a certain comedy in watching your partner be pursued down a cobbled street by their own suitcase but it falls most firmly in to the ‘look back and laugh’ category.

The Hotel Moderno sits just outside the old city walls at the foot of a very steep drop down from the town centre. The nearest road up to the city is via the Porta Ovile but pedestrians can use a handy series of escalators not fifty yards from the hotel entrance. These take you up to the church of San Francesco, but beware: they are closed after midnight, which makes for a long diversion (unless you take a drunken detour through a contrada party and someone’s house but that’s a story I’m still in denial about).

The hotel may once have been within nodding distance of ‘moderno’ but those days are long gone. The lobby made a good impression with its polished, wooden reception and matching concierge – definitely ‘old school’ with very smart attire and an expectation of decorum from the guests. The lobby widened to one side to reveal a comfy-looking bar area with a restaurant across the hall. A bag-carrying underling was summoned and we were escorted up a couple of floors to our room.

After apparently offending the underling with my tip (he seemed mildly pleased initially but his behaviour later in the bar smacked of revenge) we surveyed our fairly standard double room with en suite. Wide bed, clean bathroom, view over a pleasant enough little valley. If one isn’t too fussy about décor then it would do. Some would say ‘tatty’; a kinder word might be ‘tired’.

Greater faults revealed themselves as our single night stay progressed. The shower had no desire to be contained by bourgeoisie restrictions and allowed its water to flow liberally. It was also discovered, at about five in the morning, that the walls were made of stout card. We benefited from someone else’s early morning call, apparently much more so then the intended recipient who demonstrated a stubborn refusal to wake. For a long, long time.

A good breakfast was definitely required and we got one…in Sorrento about three days later. The coffee was more dreadful than I thought possible in Italy and the selection of cold meats, cheeses and stale bread left us disappointed. Disappointed with a hangover is not good.

We were sad to leave Siena after so short a stay but leaving the Moderno made the departure somewhat less emotional. In a desperate attempt to leave us with happy memories the concierge rustled up a taxi for us. Good try, but, overall, thank you, but not again.

We only had one night in Siena and so the choice of restaurant had to be just right. The Blonde had a stringent set of criteria that we’d had to be flexible on thus far: small piazza with no traffic, outside seating, friendly hosts, busy but not too busy and authentic with a heavy emphasis on seafood. Getting all the ticks is not as easy as you might think but with Renzo we got pretty close.

Situated on the small Piazza Indipendenza, Renzo is a stone’s throw away from the Campo but was relatively peaceful on the night we were there. The host used the international hand signal for ‘find an empty table and sit at it’ so we did. On the terrace the owners had largely dispensed with the convention of spaces between tables, either to encourage an atmosphere of bonhomie or cram the punters in. If everyone is in a gregarious mood, and the vino is flowing, this can make for a fun evening. Of course this may not always be the case. . .

A litro of perfectly serviceable vino rosso found its way to us with appropriate speed and we perused what was a fairly extensive menu. Several staples tend to find their way on to most Italian menus and are generally reliable. Renzo had a good range of antipasti taking in cold meats and crostini with other courses taking in the peasant influences of the area and featuring wild boar as well as sausages, steak and a limited range of fish.

We set about the dining challenge with gusto, starting with some robust crostini with a range of toppings including olive and anchovies. Il primo brought a delightful minestrone soup was shared (‘this is why I never buy the packet stuff’ declared the Blonde, a soup connoisseur of some repute) and was a bowl of ravioli – large but delicate parcels with a particularly solid tomato sauce.

Undaunted, we continued into il secondo. Be prepared – you get what it says on the menu. Salads and vegetables need to be ordered separately. The Blonde got her gamborini with just their brandy sauce and my sausage arrived firmly planted on a rather thick bed of polenta. The polenta proved to be a carbohydrate too far for me but the gamborini were pronounced a runaway success.

The proprietor took the completion of our meal into his own hands and furnished the Blonde with a decidedly sticky limoncello while the extent of my machismo was tested with a large grappa. Nothing brings a table full of strangers together like strong liqueurs and the accompanying facial contortions. It was at this point that I noticed the evening start to slide out of control.

Renzo is a very affordable and enjoyable place to wile away an evening but if the grappa starts to go down a little too well, beware.

Open for lunch and evenings (closed Thursdays).

The city square is its set piece for the visitor. Polished and scrubbed; the parlour that’s only used on high days and holidays. The grandest of buildings, fine statuary and fountains accompanied by pavement cafes offering you the opportunity to linger a while. The city square is often frozen in the city’s heyday – when the coffers were full and money could be spent on civic projects. And if the locals still love the square and share it with the tourists then it truly becomes the heart of the city. That is so clearly the case in Siena.

The medieval centre of Siena is a jumble of narrow alleys that plunge steeply this way and that. The wider alleys, or main thoroughfares in Siennese terms, meander their way towards the Campo but by nothing approaching a direct route. This prevents you getting any sort of impression of the approaching piazza until, coming from the north; you stumble down the steep flights of steps and virtually fall into it. And it is nothing like any piazza I have ever seen. It is essentially fan shaped with the focus sitting at the lowest point of quite a steep slope, in front of the city’s Palazzo Public and mighty, 97 metre bell tower. The curve facing the palace is largely lined with cafes and restaurants, all doing a roaring trade.

The space is marvellous. The piazza remains largely bare. People sit and lay around absorbing the sunshine and passing the time of day. The only feature is the square marble Fonte Gaia, which, to me, looks misplaced with its renaissance froth sticking out like a sore thumb in its relatively simple surroundings.

During our day and night in Siena we kept returning to the Campo partly because the roads tend to wind towards there and partly because it is one of the few places where you can be certain where you are. Each time we lingered; the colours, the architecture, the cold beer all contributed.

The Campo has been the scene of many a grand civic event – it forms a natural amphitheatre and has a dramatic, theatrical quality about it – from bullfights to preaching and executions to elections. It is also the venue for the spectacular festival that is the Palio. Crazy parades and mediaeval costumes abound twice yearly in the run up to an incredibly fast horse race around the edge of the Campo. We were visiting at the wrong time of year (that would have taken far too much planning!) but we did witness the minor silliness of a contrada parade with stupid costumes and slightly tipsy bad behaviour the order of the day.

The Campo is simply magnificent.

The elegantly skinny Torre del Mangia towers over the Campo and offers one of the few chances to get up and out of the narrow medieval streets should you want to. The Blonde and I were more than keen having climbed both the Campanile and Duomo in Florence.

The bell tower dates back to Siena’s 14th-century heyday when it vied with other city-states for local prominence. It is named after its gluttonous first watchman and there is a statue to commemorate the fellow in the Palazzo’s inner courtyard (where the ticket office is situated). Take a moment to look up and enjoy the view of the sky and the tower that is framed by the courtyard – I found it exhilarating in a dizzying, reverse-vertigo sort of way.

Access to the tower is via a small doorway in a corner of the courtyard – the first short staircase leads to a widened hallway where an attendant checks tickets and regulates traffic. The policing is quite stern considering one is a paying visitor although it doesn’t take long to see why. Tickets for ascent are sold with half-hourly slots – turn up before your time and you will be made to wait in the lobby. When you start the main 503 step ascent you’ll see why. A single narrow staircase winds its way around the square insides of the tower.

For ever.

There is barely any room for passing; even less if you’re encumbered with a pack of any size. Your only hope is to press yourself into the landing corners and even then it remains somewhat intimate. Luckily the half hourly timings seem to work well as this is roughly how long it takes to go up, recover your breath, regain the use of your lower limbs, gaze longingly over the beautiful Tuscan cityscape and countryside, ask your partner if they’re sure they wouldn’t like to grow olives and raise bambinos on a rustic hillside while sipping Frascati and complete the dizzying descent with a heavy heart.

The majority of the climb is made inside the heavy walls of the tower – odd glimpses of the outside world can be gained through narrow slits but the dramatic view is largely saved for the top. One re-emerges into the sunlight to view the ant-people down in the Campo and gaze across the terracotta rooftops to the countryside beyond. Magnificent.

The final few flights of stairs are not for the fainthearted. Outside the brick solidity of the tower proper, steep wooden ladders can be taken to successive platforms that felt, to me at least, shockingly unstable. The Blonde displayed her usual wisdom and called it a day on the first landing. I didn’t get much further.

The tower opens at 10am year-round and closing time varies according to season, stretching late into the evening in the summer. Admission costs €5.50 or €9.50 combined with Museo Civico admission.

We had a single day in Siena and, with a leisurely lunch to cram in before our train, time had to be spent wisely. The Blonde was quite happy to sip espressos and laze around the Campo until departure, but I needed more.

The magnificent gothic Palazzo Publico occupies the flat side of the Campo and serves as the seat of local government. Its stately main rooms now form the Museo Civica and access is via an enclosed courtyard, which also houses the ticket booth and entrance to the Torre del Mangia. Initial plans were for a quick ascent of the tower to justify a few recuperative lunchtime beers but we discovered that you had to book timeslots and we would have to wait. My proposal for a quick turn round the museum was met with gentle but firm rejection so watches were synchronised and I wandered in myself.

The museum is accessed via a staircase through the gift shop and you initially pass through a few rooms hung with worthy but non-too-interesting pictures portraying the life of Vittorio Emanuele I. If the Rough Guide hadn’t alluded to the treasures buried within then I would have been enduring a ‘told you it’d be dull’ smirk from the Blonde sooner than planned. Luckily the galleries are in stark contrast to the enormous frescoed halls that make up the bulk of the museum. Some of the frescoes date from as early as the 14th century and are still vivid and powerful. The collection is regarded as some of the most important in Europe and, rarely for the time, wanders away from religious themes into the secular.

The most celebrated frescoes can be found in the Sala del Mappamondo and adjoining Sala della Pace. The map of the heavens that gave its name to the former can now barely be seen but Martini’s Maesta remains vivid and powerful. The Sala della Place houses the first panorama known in western art as part of a decidedly gothic piece that is apparently rich in allegorical meaning. The walled, medieval Siena features as part of a piece designed to show the impact of good and bad government and to keep the councillors on their toes.

After Florence I found the museum to be pleasantly lacking in crowds. You need space and time to enjoy art on this scale and there is no feeling of pressure or being hurried through the exhibits. I spent an absorbing hour or so here – it is a fabulous building inside and out. Siena has something of the ‘undiscovered’ about it in comparison to its world-renowned Tuscan neighbours of Pisa and Florence and this can be strongly felt here. One can also access a terrace that has incredible views over the rooftops and into the Tuscan hills beyond.

If you only go to one museum in Siena.

The museum costs €6.50 or €9.50 including tower.July & Aug 10am-11pm; March-Oct 10am-7pm; Nov-Feb 10am-6.30pm.