The Tranquility of a Post-Palio Siena

If you are looking for noise, excitement, pageantry and crowds –lots of crowds – then visit Siena during the Palio weekend as some of my classmates did. But if you prefer quiet reflection and serene beauty, then I suggest that you visit the weekend after the Palio as I did on Saturday.

My travelling companions and I arrived on Friday evening so that we could get an early start, hitting the streets by 8 am before the day trippers from Rome and other locations had arrived. Based on the quiet, almost deserted streets, it appeared that the local residents were getting a little extra sleep this Saturday after the excitement of the past weekend. The first stop was the Basilica Cateriniana di San Domenico, the 13^th century Dominican church where Catherine of Siena spent a good part of her life and where reliquaries of some of her remains are found. The church was open but completely empty. Astonishingly, my traveling companions and I had the whole church to ourselves for at least 15 minutes! It was so quiet that we could hear the birds singing outside. Eventually, two or three other visitors arrived, but the mood of silent reverence in this beautiful church remained. Like the other churches that we visited in Siena, no photography is allowed in the basilica. I think this helps to make it more of a place of prayer and reflection than a spot to check off your European travel list as you add photos to your Instagram account. The basilica’s bookshop sells reasonably priced postcards of all its artwork and relics so that you can still have visual mementos of your visit. (In fact, the basilica’s interior shots in this blog are photos of postcards.)

After the basilica we headed to Il Campo, Siena’s large central piazza, to have a leisurely breakfast on the patio of one of the many restaurants that line its perimeter. While there were a few people out enjoying breakfast or a walk in the piazza, it was much quieter than I suspect it usually is and certainly nothing like the crowds that were there the previous weekend to watch the town’s famed horse race. As we sipped our coffees, we enjoyed watching the mixture of local families and small groups of tourists strolling by in this medieval square.

We ended our morning with a visit to Saint Catherine’s home, where, again, there were only a few visitors other than us. We were able to take our time reflecting, praying and studying the artwork on the interior walls that told the story of this remarkable saint. All in all, my peaceful Saturday in Siena is one that I will long remember with gratitude and fondness.

by Rosemary Boissonneau

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