A Place To Read A Book And Write A Letter: Siena

From Florence, we took an hour's bus ride across Italy to Siena. Siena had their Tuscan posteriors handed to them with an almost insulting air of superiority by the Medici, the ruling family of Florence, back in the day. Florence decided they liked the color scheme, and took it. That's good business.

Siena is probably best known for its annual horse race; there are no horses when we visit, but there is an unsettling vexation with porcelain horses. I do not buy any.

As with most old cities, Siena orbits its Duomo; this church is a tad more interesting. Not in an architectural way; I'll be the first to tell you I can't tell apses from Adam when it comes to talking about architecture. I think architects have a unique ability to define undefinable things, with words like "rustification" and "plasticity." The catch here is they never tell anyone outside their club what those definitions are. However, this Duomo is interesting for something else. It's a skeleton - or at least half of it is. There is a finished church, but there's also two enormous walls that mark the best laid plans of Renaissance masons which never bore fruit. The money was appropriated before the project reached completion; now, one wall is a museum, and the other is a sort of lookout point for tourists.

The front of the remaining Duomo is covered by gargoyles and biblical equivalents of action figures. These are all duplicates, though. The originals were long ago put into the museum in the wall, having been destroyed by pollution. Their hands and noses gnawed away by the human leprosy, they traded places with look alikes and stunt doubles. The original stained glass window, too, was replaced, but unlike the original statues, it retained its dignity in the museum; it was placed at the end of a dark tunnel, where people can still see it as it was meant.

Most Roman towns operate by rules of mathematics, originating from something called a decumanus, as the homework I copied last night said. From atop that second wall, the lookout wall, it is easily seen that Siena is not like that. Siena is a snake, abandoning hope of a human order for something more organic. While the town orbits the Duomo, the streets grow like roots out of the Campo.

The Campo is a beautiful field of bricks, desperately wanting a frisbee. I could kick myself for not bringing one; I'm not a big advocate of the frisbee, but some situations simply demand it. The floor is slanted towards the main civic building, from which emanate eight silver stone streaks, dividing the Campo into nines; each section is dalmation doted with pockets of tourists, including Adella and Jane, two girls from the Czech Republic. American charm is in high demand over there.

(The italics denote the generic eastern bloc accent I put on during our conversation; I do this unintentionally but uncontrollably. They didn't mention it.)

Confetti in the cracks of the bricks bespoke of a swank celebration, and indeed, the girls tell me there was recently a wedding in the Campo. I don't have to say that in all the places I visit, I don't always read a book and write a letter. I didn't in Siena. Not doing so, in such a place as that open space, will probably go on my Top Five Regrets of the Semester.