The marble floor
56 engraved and inlaid panels, uncovered weeks a year.
Raimond Spekking — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · TeKappa — CC BY-SA 4.0
**A cathedral striped throughout in black and white marble, its floor fifty-six marble panels uncovered only a few weeks a year** — one of the greatest churches in Italy. ⚠ **The black and white are not only an aesthetic choice**: they are **Siena's colours** — from the legend of its founding by the sons of Remus, who rode one white horse and one black. ✅ **The floor is extraordinary**: **56 inlaid and engraved marble panels** designed by Siena's leading artists over two centuries, **depicting biblical scenes and pagan figures** — ⚠ **kept covered most of the year for protection**, **and fully revealed for only a few weeks** (usually late summer and autumn). ✅ It holds the **Piccolomini Library**, whose frescoes look painted yesterday, and **Nicola Pisano's pulpit**. ⚠ **The unfinished "new cathedral"** stands beside it as a wall open to the sky.
56 engraved and inlaid panels, uncovered weeks a year.
Frescoes in colours as fresh as if painted yesterday.
A carved marble pulpit of the 13th century.
Piazza del Duomo, 53100 Siena, Italy
**A plan to double the cathedral's size, stopped by the Black Death — and its wall still stands.** ✅ **The ambition**: in **1339** — with Siena at the height of its wealth and its rivalry with Florence — **the city resolved on an enormous enlargement**: **turning the existing church into a mere transept** of a far larger new cathedral built at right angles to it. **It was to be the largest church in Christendom.** ⚠ **What happened**: **the Black Death struck Siena in 1348** — **killing something close to half its people** — ⚠ **its economy collapsed and it never recovered its standing**. **Building stopped**, and **structural problems** appeared in the hastily built piers. ✅ **What you see today**: the **Facciatone** — «the big façade» — **the partly finished front wall standing alone with no church behind it**, its windows open to the sky; **and the side aisles**, which now house the cathedral museum. ✅ **You can climb to its top** — ⚠ by a narrow spiral stair — ✅ **and the view takes in the cathedral, the city and the hills**, the best in Siena. ✅ **It is the clearest visible mark the Black Death left on any European city.**
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