Italy Part 3: Tuscany drive, Florence, Siena

Here's installment #3 of our Italy trip. (One more to go after this.)

On Dec 27th, we split up as we left Rome. Mark and Marilyn went on directly to Florence, while Heather, Kristen, and I spent the day driving around the Tuscan countryside. (We would end up in Florence that evening.)

We took an early-morning train towards Florence but got off about halfway in a small town called Chiusi. There, I picked up a rental car (a little yellow Fiat Panda) and we started driving!

My ride

The entire day was filled with spectacular scenery.

Tuscan countryside

We had planned several stops in small Tuscan hilltop towns, all of which had their heydays in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. First up: Montepulciano.

Next to main gate of Montepulciano

Montepulciano, sprawled out on a ridgeline, offered plenty of uphill walking. We learned that as the highlight of the town's biggest annual festival, vying two-men teams roll huge heavy wine barrels approximately 2-3 miles uphill as fast as possible as they race from the main gate up to the main square. Given the constant steepness of the streets, we couldn't even believe such a feat was possible!

Streets of Montepulciano

After plenty of climbing, we reached the pleasant, quiet central piazza.

Main square

A fancy palazzo on the square is historically and currently owned by the Contucci family, who operate a winemaking business out of their basement.

Cantina Contucci on the main square

We headed into the Contucci winery to tour the operation and sample some vino.

Winery

Montepulciano, small as it is, is world-famous for its special blend, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. We sampled several in-house variants. It was all delicious!

Wine sampling at Contucci

Back outside, we wandered around Montepulciano a bit more before heading back to the car.

Bambino in the piazza

All of these hilltop towns have marvelous views.

View from streets of Montepulciano

In Montepulciano

Then we were back on the road.

Looking back towards Montepulciano

The next stop, 15 min away: Pienza.

Main gate of Pienza

Pienza is famous as the birthplace of Pope Pius II. In fact, the town was then known as Corsignano, and after becoming pope, Pius invested tons of money into turning his tiny hometown into a Renaissance showpiece of art and architecture. The town was then renamed Pienza, after the pope.

More recently, Pienza has become known for Pecorino cheese. This cheese is sooo delicious—we bought a kilo of aged Pecorino here and it lasted us only maybe 3 days!

Pecorino of Pienza

We walked around and savored Pienza's Renaissance architecture and great views of the countryside below.

Cathedral of Pienza

On the edge of Pienza

Inside the Duomo

Streets of Pienza

Countryside view

The day was already slipping by quickly, so we soon got back on the road.

Classic Tuscan panorama

Soon we spotted our final stop, high up on a ridge: Montalcino.

Looking up to Montalcino

Montalcino is at a slightly higher elevation than our other destinations, and though it was quite sunny, the blustery wind brought on quite a chill.

Walking into Montalcino

Duomo of Montalcino

Bell tower in Montalcino

Castle in Montalcino

View from Montalcino's heights

Back in the car, we bypassed the regional hub of Siena (which we would return to in a few days… see below) and continued on back roads. Unfortunately, having a winter sunset time of 4:30, our sunlight was fast dwindling.

Nearing sunset

This particular stretch of road crossed a small geological area known as the creté (literally, "craters"), canyon-like cliffs of rock that scar the lush, green landscape.

Creté

With too many beautiful places too stop, and too little time, we oohed and awed out the window as we sped on.

As the light faded, vivid colors came out for that magical time of day, and we were compelled to stop to take some pictures of the awesome sunset.

Tuscan sunset

I'll let the next several pictures speak for themselves!

After dark, we turned onto the motorway and sped towards Florence. 15 miles from our destination, we found ourselves reduced to a crawl in traffic as a tunnel ahead was totally closed. We were eventually led off the motorway onto the "old" road into Florence, along with everyone else. We lost about 1.5 hours in this little diversion! Then we had a mix-up finding our apartment while trying to avoid parking illegally, and took longer than expected finding and paying to refill the gas tank, and so after Heather and I finally dropped the car off at the rental agency I was long overdue for a big pizza dinner!

Pizza dinner in Florence

The next morning, we set out to explore Florence.

Heather above the Arno

Vespas and the Ponte Vecchio

This was my first ever visit to Florence, and it was pretty amazing to see all of the trademarks of the birthplace of the Renaissance. Not the least of which is Florence's gorgeous Duomo, with the massive dome designed by Brunelleschi.

Duomo of Florence

Front view, with Baptistery in foreground

Amazing frescos on the interior of the dome

Heather and I continued our quest for high points by climbing up the dome. This was probably the most expensive, crowded, and convoluted of such climbs in our entire trip, but it was still worth it.

Climbing up the actual dome section!

Of course, the views from the top were spectacular.

Traffic going down

Close up of ceiling frescos

Cumulous clouds above the Duomo

Archway in Florence

With the accompaniment of a Rick Steves podcast, we toured the quirky Orsanmichele church, once a granary/market, and its cool art. The exterior of the church is blessed with remarkable sculptures by some of the Renaissance masters, like this striking statue of St George by Donatello.

St George by Donatello

Listening to Rick Steves outside Orsanmichele

The main square of Florence, Piazza della Signoria, is also quite a sight to behold.

Main square

In a corner of the square is an open-air, free "museum" with some spectacular sculptures.

Piazza della Signoria sculptures

That evening, we waited in line to tour the Uffizi gallery, one of the world's top art museums. A Rick Steves podcast helped us skip through much of the copious amounts of art and make sure we saw the good stuff, such as Botticelli's Birth of Venus. Photos were forbidden, but I was able to snap this one out the window of the enclosed passageway going towards the Ponte Vecchio. You see, the di Medici family lived in a huge palace across the river, and worked in this very building, the Uffizi (or "offices"). Being the di Medicis, they decided to have this private passageway built (it goes across on the bridge through the top floor) so that they'd have their own exclusive commuting route. Pretty cool!

Private passageway into the Uffizi

That evening, we had another home-cooked Italian meal led by Heather. (Note the precious Pecorino cheese!)

Dinner

The next morning, we first headed to the Accademia, home most notably of one huge giant of Renaissance art: Michelangelo's David. Standing 17 ft tall, with smooth features, a powerful physique, and an expression that from one view spells "relaxed confidence" and another "fearful resolve", it's an amazing object to behold. Probably my favorite single piece of artwork of the trip.

Later, we walked by Santa Croce church. We didn't go inside, because it was pricey (paying to go in a church is not fun!) and we realized we could get in for free if we went to a holiday concert advertised for that same evening.

Santa Croce plaza

Santa Croce

Then we headed back to the main square to investigate the sculptures there more closely.

Courtyard of Palazzo della Singoria, looking out to the piazza

One of the coolest outdoor sculptures is Giambologna's Rape of the Sabine Women, consisting of three spiraling figures impressively balanced.

Rape of the Sabine Women

Nearby is a copy of Michelangelo's David, and Perseus slaying Medusa by Cellini.

Michelangelo's David, Cellini's Perseus slaying Medusa

Resting near the outdoor art

In front of the Ponte Vecchio

View from Ponte Vecchio

That same day, we visited the Bergamo Gallery, which is chock full of cool sculptures.

That evening, we went to the concert at Santa Croce, which turned out to be a children's choir singing sentimental Christmas tunes backed by canned accompaniment. Some of the songs went over the tackiness line, but it was still fun, and reminded me a bit of my DMCC days. Plus, we got to see the church interior for free!

Concert in Santa Croce

The next morning, New Year's Eve, we walked to the bus station to travel to Siena.

Morning walk along the Arno

It was a 1-hour bus ride through the beautiful Chianti Hills to Siena.

Out the bus window

Out the bus window

Siena is a hill-top town, larger than most other Tuscan hilltop towns but still not really a city. It was Florence's main rival in the region in medieval days, and a regional power.

Today, Siena's best known landmark is its main piazza, Il Campo.

Town hall at Il Campo

First order of business for Heather and me was to climb the clock tower above the main square.

Siena clock tower

Our climb was rewarded with stunning views of the hills of Siena and the surrounding countryside, fading into the foggy distance.

View down to Il Campo

In one direction, we could see the Duomo of Siena. They once had plans to greatly expand this church, so that the current building would become only the cross-wise transepts of the new church, but the project ran out of money and was abandoned. However, you can still see a few unfinished walls that would have made up the unbuilt church, which would have been one of the biggest in the world if made.

Duomo

Kristen, Marilyn, and Mark below on the plaza

We next headed to the Duomo itself.

Siena's gothic Duomo

Marble pillars

The impressive interior features more striped pillars, a line of pope faces staring down from on high, and beautiful floor mosaics.

Duomo interior

Amazing pulpit by Pisano, complete with elephants holding up the pillars

Library room adjoining the cathedral, with huge choir music books and colorful frescos

It's so hilly in Siena that the ground level of the back side of the Duomo is a full flight of stairs down from that of the front side.

Back side of Duomo

We ate some lunch at a cozy pub near the Campo.

Lunch spot

The pub actually had a balcony overlooking the square:

Such balconies are prized real estate for Siena's most famous event, Il Palio. This is a twice-annual horse race that takes place in the Campo itself! Sand is put down for the track, the entire interior of the square fills with roaring spectators. Ten bareback riders on horses, representing ten of the 17 neighborhoods of Siena (each with a cool name like "Eagle" or "Dragon" or "Unicorn" or "Crested Porcupine"), sprint four laps (~1 mi) around the track. The turns are extremely sharp and riders are often bucked from their mounts (riderless horses can still win the race—but in a YouTube video I also saw a riderless horse totally miss a turn and absolutely wipe out). The winning neighborhood gets bragging rights for the year. Must be a pretty amazing spectacle.

It was by no means warm that day, but the sun was out, enough so that it was really pleasant to sit in the sun. And that we did for an hour or so, joining the dozens of other locals and tourists soaking up a few precious rays on a crisp New Year's Eve.

In the Campo

The Campo is interestingly sloped towards the center of one side—like a shallow amphitheater.

Il Campo—note all the people on the "sunny side"!

After our sunbath (and a bit of gelato) we went for a little wander.

Arches over Sienese street

From a nearby rise, we had really nice views of textured clouds above the town.

After checking out a couple churches, we went back to the Campo, where they were setting up for a New Year's Eve concert. However, we weren't staying—we were headed back to Florence for the evening.

We were able to enjoy a few moments of declining light in this fun town.

Christmas tree in Siena

Back in Florence, we made some more food and rested up before heading to a late-night concert downtown.

Dinner wine from Montepulciano

The New Year's Eve concert took place right in the middle of the "outdoor museum" in the main square.

Clock nearing midnight

It was pretty fun—a random orchestra from Slovakia, I think (seeing their name advertised beforehand, I predicted that it would be one of those cheap-but-decent Eastern European "value" orchestras) playing some romantic-era classics. The main downside of the experience was that there were people setting off fireworks all around, including in the plaza itself, and the startling noises were equally annoying to performers and crowd alike. The conductor actually at one point got on the microphone and pleaded with them to stop for a minute, but to no real success. But the conductor did pop a bottle of champagne at midnight and drink it while directing, so there was fun to be had all around. And I have to give the value orchestra performers credit for staying sane through all the fireworks and coldness of the night.

The next morning was our last in Florence, and Heather and I jogged up to the Piazza Michelangelo to catch some sunrise views of the city.

Sunrise over Florence

Another copy of Michelangelo's David

 

Then, it was off to Pisa!