Duomo di Siena

Leaving the Piazza del Campo, the open skies and the lofty campanile of the Palazzo Pubblico, the shrouding medieval streetscape takes hold. Moving through archways and high rising, solid facades of palazzi, there is a sense that as Hisham Matar wrote in his reflective ‘A Month in Siena’ one is ‘entering a living organism’. Once inside the walls, within the central vortex, the city asks for your full attention and there is one building that that attention is so often focused towards.

Travelling to Siena through the surrounding hills, the duomo dwarfs the city and steals the skyline show. Its concentric streets and medieval outer walls fade away and the gaze is directed to the towering campanile. Synonymously Tuscan, the interchanging dark green and white marble contrast starkly with the soft blue’s and greys of an autumn afternoon sky. Like the Florence duomo and the cupola of Brunelleschi, it is from afar that its scale and might are truly appreciated.

The neatly woven spiralling streets do not give way to the duomo with a sudden grand reveal. From the east, it is masked slightly as the the first sight of complex is of the campanile and cupola, framed through the Facciatone archway. The archway an ambitious but abandoned expansion project of the 14th century.  

Steadily, moving to the front of the cathedral the extravagant Gothic glory is revealed, the frantically detailed western façade. Standing, bemused at the details, the setting sunset heightened the vision as it cast a golden glow. The white marble turned to gold and the pink Sienese marble a fleshy orange tone, one to match the finest Puglian peach.  

The famed Carrara and pink marble finely carved into gargoyles, Sienese symbolism, acanthus scrolls and niched saints were intensified by crisp shadows cast by the last vestiges of sun. The central, vast rose window reflected billowing clouds and a glittering mosaic depicting the Coronation of the Virgin on the upper façade was radiant, unapologetically golden.

It is an astonishing ensemble cast made by some of the finest craftsmen of the Gothic period. Like a great painting from the Sienese school, each new search over the façade brings to light yet one more minute detail that again seizes your attention.

While the west front was a veritable feast for the eyes, the eastern façade and the entrance to the baptistry was more reserved. We left the piazza del Duomo, now in shadow, and descended a yellow and white marbled staircase running between townhouses and the duomo. The baptistry fell with us, soaring ever higher above.

As we sat on the steps, we uttered to each other what were the first words we had spoken in some time. We had passed each other, stood next to each other, turning our gaze around and skyward but were both unwilling to break the meditation of simply looking undisturbed.

An unknown amount of time had lapsed since we had been pulled into the duomo’s outer orbit. We had been entranced and we had not even crossed the threshold.