The cathedral view
The Duomo and the city from the San Domenico square.
Berthold Werner — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Berthold Werner — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Cinzia astorino — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Francesco Bini — CC BY-SA 4.0
**A vast, austere brick church holding the head of Saint Catherine of Siena** — on a hill west of the city, with an open view to the cathedral. It was built from the **13th century** for the Dominicans, **and its plainness is deliberate**: **bare brick, bare walls, an open timber roof** — **the architecture of a mendicant order** that refuses ornament on purpose. ⚠ **It is a complete contrast with the cathedral** minutes away. ⚠ **It is bound up with Catherine of Siena** (1347–1380) — **a nun who wrote to the Pope instructing him to return from Avignon to Rome**, and who acquired political influence unprecedented for a woman of her time; **she is patron saint of Italy and of Europe**. ⚠ **Her relics are in her chapel here**: **her head and a finger** are displayed in a reliquary — ⚠ **which some visitors find distressing**. ✅ **The view from its square** towards the cathedral is among the finest in Siena.
The Duomo and the city from the San Domenico square.
Wall paintings in Saint Catherine's chapel.
Brick and an open timber roof, without ornament.
Piazza San Domenico, 53100 Siena, Italy
**A barely literate nun whose dictated letters changed the course of the papacy — and who became patron saint of Italy and of Europe.** ✅ **Who she was**: **Caterina Benincasa** (1347–1380), a dyer's daughter in Siena, **the twenty-fifth of twenty-five children**. **She refused marriage** and joined the **Dominican Third Order** — which allowed a religious life without entering a convent. ✅ **Her first work**: **nursing plague victims**, the poor and prisoners in Siena. ✅ **What made her extraordinary**: **she began dictating letters** — **she could write herself only with difficulty** — **to princes, cities, cardinals and the Pope himself**, in a tone of plain command. ⚠ **Her most famous act**: **she pressed Pope Gregory XI to return the papacy from Avignon to Rome** after some seventy years of the «Babylonian captivity» — **and he did return, in 1377**; a considerable role in which is credited to her. ✅ **She left** some **380 letters** and *The Dialogue*, **and is a Doctor of the Church** — a title first given to a woman (with Teresa of Ávila) in 1970. ⚠ **She died at thirty-three.** ✅ **Her relics are divided**: **her body is in Rome, her head here in Siena** — returned to her own city.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.