Things to Do at Siena Cathedral (Duomo)

Siena Cathedral claws skyward from the old city's summit like a striped beast, its white Carrara marble slashed with greenish-black Prato serpentine that drinks Tuscan light and shifts tone every hour. Walk closer and Giovanni Pisano's 1280s lower facade erupts with prophets, philosophers, snarling lions, while the upper register, finished a century later, blazes with Venetian mosaics that flare copper-red at sunset. The bell tower beside it wears the same humbug stripes, and the whole ensemble feels less like one building than a civic argument carved in stone, Siena shouting across the valley at rival Florence. Push through the doors and the stripes keep coming, this time in alternating bands of black and white marble that climb the nave piers and spin your gaze toward a deep-blue vault spangled with gilded stars. The air carries cold stone and beeswax, and your footfalls echo above one of Christendom's most extraordinary floors: 56 inlaid marble panels, worked between roughly 1369 and 1547 by some forty Sienese artists including Domenico di Bartolo and Domenico Beccafumi, showing sibyls, allegories, Old Testament scenes. Most of the floor stays hidden under protective boards all year and is unveiled only for a few weeks in late summer and early autumn, a reveal locals queue for as eagerly as any tourist. The Duomo stays memorable because masterpieces crowd its compact Gothic shell. Nicola Pisano's octagonal pulpit of 1265-1268, carved from Carrara marble with seven panels of Christ's life, stands a few steps from Donatello's bronze pavement roundel of Giovanni Pecci and Michelangelo's early statues of saints Peter, Paul, Pius, and Gregory in the Piccolomini Altar. Off the left aisle, the Piccolomini Library glows with Pinturicchio's 1502-1507 fresco cycle, ten luminous scenes of the life of Pope Pius II, colors as fresh as if the pigment dried last Tuesday.

The Duomo crowns the highest ridge of Siena's old city. From Piazza del Campo, count on a ten-minute uphill march along Via di Citta and Via del Capitano. Arriving by train? Ride the escalators and moving walkways at the Antiporto. They lift you from the valley floor to Piazza Gramsci in minutes. From there, a short southbound stroll on level stone brings you to the church. Buses from Florence, the rapida service via the Siena-Firenze raccordo, run 75-90 minutes and stop at Piazza Gramsci. Driving is a headache. The historic centre is a camera-policed ZTL. Legal parking hides at Santa Caterina, Il Campo, and Il Duomo. All three are paid lots. All three feed into pedestrian lanes.