Don't mention Halloween!

Monday, October 31

So, it's Halloween. It's a day we have tried to avoid talking about.

We're still in Sienna. I'll walk us through some of the artwork that I fell in love with, and then move us on quickly to our current day. There is a problem here though: I'm writing about Halloween day and night and yet, but I'm living in November. I'll try to bridge this gap...

We visited the Duomo in Sienna today. It was built between 1215 and 1263 over an earlier church and tells much of the story of Siena in its grandeur and its neglect.

This was the entrance to the Baptistry, which is located beneath the one of the choir bays in the Cathedral. We arrived early and found ourselves hanging around waiting for the church to open at 9:30 AM.

After some people watching, pigeon watching, and some extra coffee, we got our tickets and went straight up the tower. The bell tower is located in what was meant to be an entirely new addition to the church, but the black death in 1348 halted any plans for that and they had to give up the dream. So, a hollow shell remained where a new nave would have been. They filled this in with a beautiful museum that I would gladly revisit. One of my best memories of the day was looking at the artwork with Alex and Eleni; they actually listened and asked questions about the comparison of Byzantine and Renaissance works and the Biblical stories we were looking at. When Eleni spotted an Annunciation piece and loudly (and proudly) called me over to see it, the guard was not happy, but I was.

Our hotel is somewhere in this labyrinth.

We went back to the Baptistry. I could have spent much longer in this space with sculptures by Donatello, Sienna's unique marble floors, and frescoes of the beginnings and the ends of the Christian cycle, baptism and the apocalypse. Yes, with some annunciation motifs, too.

Neil's friends found us and then we all visited the Cathedral together. Overwhelming.
The floor is covered with mosaics. This one is famous, but gruesome. It's the murder of the innocents. While this scene is disturbing, it's just the beginning.

Alex and I walked through the Piccolomini Library. If you read yesterday's entry, you know who these crescent shaped mosaics on the floor belong to. The whole room is dedicated to Pope Pius II as well!

Artwork lesson for the day complete. We had a picnic in the Campo with our friends and then went back to the hotel for siesta. It was a beautiful day for hanging out the laundry...After siesta, we wandered around Siena with our friends. We spent some of that precious time between afternoon drinking combinations of that in between time. Here we are overlooking the Campo.
And, Halloween? OK. It does exist here, but it's more of a party event rather than door to door. A few days before, when Alex and Eleni realized they were not going trick or treating in the same magical sugar induced manner as home, they both crumbled. So, Neil and I chose to ignore the day completely. Surely that will help.

Well, yes and no.

Yes, great strategy until...

No.

All of the afternoon into twilight time, we were bombarded by Italian children: four-feet-tall gremlins, angels, witches, and ghosts coming home from Halloween parties carrying bags of candy. The effort we put into distracting Alex and Eleni from seeing them was comical. And, of course, just a huge failure.

"It's Halloween! Where is our candy?!"