Visiting Sienna (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Sienna (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sienna requires climbing up a steep hill on foot; it is located on top of a hill like most medieval towns in Italy.  Towns were located on top of hills for defensive purposes with the church being the ultimate fortress complete with weapons.

Brown buildings with lots of lookout towers bear witness to the town’s turbulent past.  My travel guide said that Sienna had several wars with its neighbors, particularly in 1230.

In 1230, the Florentines catapulted manure and dead donkeys over the walls of Sienna in an attempt to cause plague in the city, so its inhabitants would die.  

Dead plague victims would make it easy to take all of Sienna’s gold and silver and take control of the city’s food supplies and gain tribute payments from the field managers.

I noticed several statues of Romulus and Remus with their wolf mother, a symbol of Rome throughout the town.  The Siennese appear to have aligned themselves with Rome against Florentine domination.

The first place we visited was the Palazzo Publico and the square in front of the palace.  I admired the copy of della Quercia’s Fonte Gaia in the shell-shaped fountain.

The original fountain suffered quite a bit from people sitting on it during the fast-paced horse race called The Palio.

Inside the Palazzo Publico, there was a lot of restoration work being done on the frescoes from the 12^th century.  As in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, the Palazzo Publicco had a large mural depicting the city’s battles with other cities.

My favorite murals were painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and entitled The Effects of Good and Bad Government.  Good government featured lots of markets and orderly work in the fields.

The scenery Lorenzetti depicted still resembled the rolling countryside we passed through on the train.  We visited the Duomo and ate a lunch of bread and cheese in a park washed down with fizzy water.

We walked in the midday sun and skipped the siesta, so we could see every beautiful street in this town.  Fatigue overcame me on the train back to Florence.  I slept all the way there.

Later that night, the parents of one of my college friends came to get us to take us out for dinner in his air-conditioned BMW.  I think they took a trip to Europe, so Laurent would not starve on our long honeymoon in Europe.

We were going to eat Chiana steak with wine at a Michelin starred-restaurant with my roommate and her family.   I told my roommate’s dad I wanted to drive around in the air-conditioned Bimmer all night and go to a drive-in for a cheeseburger and vanilla shake and lots of fries.

Her mother categorically told me, “No.  And, this is the end of the Brooke Shields eating or breaking ribs, so they'll reheal to make you very thin and tall.  You have to eat three meals a day and stop binging.  You have to buy some bigger jeans and eat a big pasta lunch at least once a day with Alfredo sauce twice a week.”

The University of Chicago is very multicultural and has many Jewish mothers with doctor dads, who do anorexia nervosa patrol, even for the Norman-French witches in the graduating classes.

My college roommate told me I was going to get hooked up to a cheesecake IV, if I did not consume more calcium.

Skinny-dink, French Laurent got “the memo,” too, on eating and not having to look like a model now that he was married.

“You have had your glamor wedding photos, so eat antipasto – wine, cheese, and expensive salami – before your main dish,” my roommate’s dad said.

I do not like cheesecake, so I ate pastries coated with honey and fresh pine nut seeds and got a cappuccino after that.

I thoroughly enjoyed rolling back to the Duomo in the air-conditioned Bimmer even though it was cool outside. 

When we got to the Duomo, Laurent and I ran off giggling into the labyrinth of streets around our hotel, knowing that the University of Chicago Hassidic dad and mom gave us a license to eat and drink well.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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