Siena Cathedral

Siena's cathedral is the product of a city that wanted to outdo Florence and very nearly did. Built between about 1215 and 1263, it is clad inside and out in bands of white and dark green-black marble, the colours of Siena's black and white coat of arms, with red marble added on the facade. Giovanni Pisano designed the lower facade from around 1284, a stage set of prophets and philosophers; almost all the statues outside today are copies, with the originals in the cathedral museum. In 1339 the Sienese began an extension that would have turned the existing church into the transept of a far larger one, but the Black Death of 1348 stopped work. The walls of the unfinished nave still stand to the south of the cathedral, and one of them can be climbed by a narrow stair for a view over the city.

Inside, look down before you look up. The whole floor is a picture book of 56 inlaid marble panels made from the 14th to the 16th century by about forty artists: sibyls, Old Testament stories, Pinturicchio's Mount of Wisdom and Domenico Beccafumi's scenes of Elijah and Ahab in the choir. Most of the time the finest panels are covered for protection, and they are fully uncovered for only six to ten weeks a year, usually including September. Then the pulpit: Nicola Pisano carved it in Carrara marble between 1265 and 1268, and its crowded reliefs of the life of Christ and the Last Judgement are among the founding works of Italian Gothic sculpture. In the left transept, the chapel of St John the Baptist has a bronze Baptist by Donatello and frescoes by Pinturicchio.

The third highlight is the Piccolomini Library, commissioned in 1492 by Cardinal Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, later Pope Pius III, to hold the books of his uncle Pope Pius II; much of the collection is lost, but it still keeps richly illuminated psalters of the 1460s and 1470s. Duccio's Maestà, once the high altarpiece, is now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo next door, and the round window he designed for the choir, one of the earliest surviving works of Italian stained glass, has been replaced in the church by a replica. Bernini added the gilded lantern on the dome. The cathedral is the centre of the Historic Centre of Siena UNESCO site.

Getting there

The cathedral is in the historic centre of Siena, about 0.2 km from its heart. Florence Airport (FLR) is 55.5 km away: tram T2 runs from the airport to Florence Santa Maria Novella station in about 20 minutes, and the fast Autolinee Toscane 131R coach links Florence and Siena in about 65 to 75 minutes, arriving at the northern edge of the walled centre. Siena railway station is about 2 km from the cathedral, a steep walk or a short bus ride.