Getting closer...

Perhaps I won't be a Giraffe, not even a Little Owl after all. I might just become a double headed Eagle... that is the contrada of the Aquila, or to be toffee-nosed about it: La Nobile Contrada Dell' Aquila. One of the four  contradas that can boast the title of 'Noble', bestowed on Aquila by Charles V of Habsburg, visiting Siena in 1536, apparently. 

Nothing is decided yet,  but it looks as if the puzzle pieces are suddenly falling into place. Every sign post is pointing to what we have named 'the Office',  because it has been  used as an office by the Siena town council.  It has been close to my heart from the very beginning,  situated in the 13th c. Palazzo Patrizi, Via di Citta,  It is very large- it has no outside space but who needs that when you are literally a stone throw away from the Campo? 

After an exciting  meeting with Paolo, the architect who has undertaken a preliminary investigation with the town council regarding permits, structural restrictions etc. the news were good- it would be possible to go ahead. It would take quite some time- if we are lucky we could open it by Christmas 22...

But meanwhile I could go in and paint the walls- I have great difficulty sleeping at night now- too many ideas of what to do with this place which is more or less a blank canvas- at least the walls.

More about this when/if  it is settled... 

 

Siena, Djenne and everything else..!

 

The sun is shining from a cloudless sky and  summer seems to have returned once more to Siena. The Piazza del Campo is of course the place to be on a Sunday- at least for a while, to look at people in this marvelous place. People must have been sitting here being happy in the sunshine for 800 years or maybe more… The Piazza is the heart of the city- or perhaps the womb? a gentle, embracing space, a neutral area in this city of ancient rivalries which dissolve here on the shell-shaped Campo. It is a most democratic place: during the Palio it costs nothing to be here, in the centre of the events, and at other times, while some sit and sip their wine or aperitivos in the smart bars and restaurants that border the Piazza,  you can  take advantage of the best place in town for free to eat your sandwiches and to stretch out in the sun for a while on its gentle slope. What other Piazza offers that comfort?

                                                                              

Have been absorbed in flat hunting in the last week and have seen some wonderful places- meanwhile there are other developments far away in Mali, where the little bogolan textile business is still alive with Dembele, my old bogolan master at the helm. He has just completed an order for Colefax and Fowler in London, who wanted to reorder our ‘Grande Vague’, a popular pattern they ordered some years before.

 And here it is, drying in the sun by my old home in Djenne:

And that is not all: if you read my old blog www.commutingtotimbuktu.blogspot.com  you may remember that I was going into the chicken business with my old bartender, Maman.  He bought 1100 chicks nearly 2 months ago.            

                                 

And they are now grown and all going well should be sold in the coming week! I think the foot below the chickens on the picture might be Maman’s…

There is also still manuscript business going on: a trip to Mali to try and launch the digitization studio in Gao will most probably be arranged within a month or so! 

Good government...

The Allegory of Good and Bad Government is a series of three fresco panels painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti between February 1338 and May 1339, for the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena where they are still to be seen-  here we see the fresco of Good Government- picturing a happy life in a prosperous Siena, ten years before the plague struck. 

 I have put a ring around a tower where people are pictured working- presumably mending the roof: this building was already a couple of hundred years old when the fresco was painted... It is one of the only two in the fresco which can be identified today with certainty.  (The other one being one on the Piazza del Campo, directly opposite the Palazzo Pubblico) Tomorrow I am going to see an apartment in this building, which is also today undergoing some building work- in fact the whole ancient structure is being overhauled and apartments are being sold  which can be modelled according to the wishes of the buyers: i.e: number of bathrooms, rooms etc. What is certain is that, should I buy this flat  I would have a little terrace overlooking the Torre de Mangia!

Should I buy it I would become a Civetta, a little owl- I quite like that idea.... The estate agent Luca is a fountain of knowledge about Siena, both historic and contemporary, and is second in command at the Civetta contrada.  He impressed me deeply by letting slip that he  is having dinner tonight with the famous Tittia, the jockey who won the Palio for Giraffa in July 2019 and went on to win the August one too, this time for  the Selva - it was the last Palio that was run before Covid struck.   I swooned when I heard that...  Below yesterday in interview for Corriere di Siena: 

More tomorrow when I have seen this thousand year old flat close by the Piazza de Tolomei...  I do feel excited about this one!

Next Day:

And here it is:  'my' little pensione-to-be ...? in the throes of being done up. But will it be too small? Could I have only four rooms? That is all he space could yield... It could be lovely of course: I could paint a replica of the fresco on the living room wall perhaps...

           

Some days later..alas! 

it is definitely going to be too small... what a pity. I tried to think how it could all work, but it would involve me sleeping in a space without natural light and even so it would only give us four rooms to let. 

Che peccato!
 

When Summer left; friends arrived and the Sienese lunched en Masse...

                                              

I took my evening stroll last night in a newly autumnal Siena and encountered a spectacular evening sky at the Valdimontone contrada head quarter just around the corner, which boasts one of Siena’s best views.  While contemplating the beauty of the city in awe I thought of the absorbing past week with its sights, reunions, and the never-ending cavalcade of Sienese events. 

During the last week we seemingly went from summer to winter in one fell swoop. When Les and Patty from Minnesota visited me at the beginning of the week people were walking around in t-shirts and sandals- we ate outside and so did everyone else in that last fling of summer. 

                                         

By Wednesday when Ralf and Rose had arrived from Germany the temperature had dropped by ten degrees and we wrapped up and our dinners took place inside the restaurants, with waiters checking the ’green pass’, a controversial issue here, which has caused heated demonstrations in many Italian cities: to have to show a vaccination certificate is regarded by some as a 'Fascist' measure. 

                    

My walk last night took me past the Nicchio (the Shell) contrada, not far from here. The drop in temperature had seemingly not put them off, because they were preparing for their yearly lunch in the street in front of their church, and I decided to return today to observe a little from a distance.

                          

I walked through town this morning as is my habit- I have never walked so much in my life! Siena is perfectly formed for walking – nothing is too far away. Everything within the city walls is reachable with half an hour’s walk. I came across the Leocorne (The Unicorn)  contrada  and they too were preparing for their great neighbourhood lunch. 

  

On my way back home I passed the Nicchio lunch which was in full swing! 

 

Things that happen in Siena at the weekend...

A weekend of much interest- and it is not over yet! It started with that lovely Italian habit- the Aperitivo, on Friday evening- mine is a Campari Spriz…

Then the drums started again- something that all denizens of Siena have to get used to.  

                                      

There has been a small boy under my window banging away at a drum for a week or so, with someone beside him that I suppose to be his father. This has not really annoyed me- I have found it rather charming, still being in a very friendly mood towards my adopted city and its peculiarities. I am now technically a Valdimontone, because I reside in the neighbourhood of that contrada. This boy under my window has been practicing for the competition which took place at the Piazza del Campo yesterday  afternoon- it was for all the young drummers and the flag bearers who have to learn how to engage in the intricate throwing of the flags- the origin of which  is apparently a form of martial signalling to be seen from a distance.  All the contradas have been out practicing, and Siena has been filled for weeks with that insistent ancient sound echoing between the walls of the narrow lanes.

After a nail biting finale yesterday at the Piazza del Campo in front of all the proud parents and the tourists that are still here in quite some numbers, the contrada of the Istrice (the porcupine) won after a most elegant display. 

                                             

I continued to the north of the town, where I met up with my Japanese friend  Satomi from the Dante Alighieri language school, close to the northern gate- the Camollia. This is Istrice territory and everyone  was out in force celebrating their win- not a table was to be found- but Satomi had already reserved in a rather good place which was able to produce something that pleases both the Japanese and the Swedes- a selection of raw fish starters. Oysters, tuna, and several other types of fish I cannot name and, to complete the oriental display, some seaweed. Yum...!      

                                  

To start with there were three of us in my class at the language school- Satomi and I were joined for the  first week by a very pretty young Japanese boy, Kento. However, our teacher Andrea decided to remove him and put him in another class because he was clearly unhappy with the way our conversation tended to go.  Kento loves football and wants to talk about that. Satomi and I are boring old women to him of course. We want to talk about history and culture and so does Andrea, so that is OK. The three of us now tend to stumble across a subject matter which is absorbing at nine o clock in the morning, and then we talk until 12 when the lession is over. We will have run into plenty of grammar on the way.  We have arrived at the rather complicated  stage of Italian grammar when  we encounter the  congiuntivo imperfetto, the traspassato prossimo and the miserable condizionale passato and others such horrors which I cannot even remember the name of , let alone utter.  Now, Satomi is a lovely lady and very meticulous. She actually gets it right. The only problem is that it is very difficult for the Japanese to pronounce European languages- so her Italian is very good but sometimes quite incomprehensible. But it is worth trying to unpick it, because once her sentences are understood they are not only formed with crystalline grammatical precision, they are also extremely interesting in their own right. This is what she said the other morning (In Italian of course):

‘If the Sienese had won the Battle of Marciano in 1554, I think that the centre of the Renaissance would have been situated in Siena rather than in Florence’

(Compiti: if you know any Italian, you just try and write that in grammatically correct manner, and put your answer in the comments below without cheating, please!)

                                      

There is always something interesting happening here- and it is concentrated on the lovely Piazza del Campo. Just take this morning:  I wanted to pop out for a Sunday paper and a coffee, but ran into several hundred cyclists who were doing a tour called the Eroica- a pleasure ride around the Chianti countryside, which runs through Siena too.

And I am just about to go back there again in a minute for something really quite ambitious which starts in a little while- It is a Dante Marathon, part of the 700-year celebration of Dante which just keeps going.  I understand it will be a simultaneous reading of the Divina Commedia by something like a hundred  Sienese people in various parts of town who will read one canto each. It will start in the Piazza del Campo with everyone present, reading the first Canto of Inferno at 15.30. The rest of the Inferno will then be read at the appointed places – one Canto takes about ten minutes to read.  At 16.30 the Purgatorio will start, and at 17.00 the Paradiso. At 18.30 all the participants meet up once more in the Piazza del Campo where they will all read together the final Canto of the Paradiso. 

                          This sounds pretty good- will be off in a minute and will report back!

(and just have to pop this in too...it is the tights the little Oca (the Goose) contrada boys were wearing yesterday at the competition.. troppo carino...)

A few hours later:

well it was all rather splendido:  I met up with Satomi again and we followed the  readings around town- we chose the 13th Canto of the Inferno ( the tree suicides), beautifully read next to the Chigiana Music Academy below, because Canto 5 was over subscribed: the unfortunate Francesca and Paolo got star billing and their canto was read inside  the Palazzo Pubblico, but  because of Covid not many people were allowed in...

 and for the Purgatorio  we were regaled by a splendid  reading - or enactment rather, of Canto XI, by a local maths teacher who knew it all by heart and declamed it with a passion that actually brought tears to my eyes...This is the Canto concerning a Sienese nobleman  Provenzano Salvan, born in the building behind him. He is being purged of the sin of Pride- one that Dante himself might have been most prone to..?

Finally, all these readers congregated at the Campo and here they are, a hundred or so strong, all reading the final Canto of Paradiso: