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.
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 12th 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
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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