On Friday we went to Siena with our program! The Tuscan countryside was beautiful! I couldnt take my eyes off the window the whole bus ride. It seems like such a picturesque, peaceful place to live.









This is the church of San Domenico, where Saint Catherine of Siena attended mass and had many of her famous revelations. It contains the relics of her head and thumb, and many paintings depicting her life and visions. Most of the original frescos have fallen off the walls, but the church is still beautiful!







Inside the church. We werent allowed to take pictures of the relics.












Saint Catherine's house.













The other side of Saint Catherine's house. It has now become a sanctuary which a church and a chapel where people come to pray to her and thank her for miracles.










The sanctuary of St Catherine













The Duomo di Siena (Cathedral of Siena). It has the most beautiful Gothic facade in Italy. Its huge iside and has paintings and scuptures and mosaics by all of the famous artists in Italy because it took so long to build. The entire floor is a mosiac which is covered most of the year and took 200 years to make. Its really beautiful.







The bell tower. The marble inside and outside the church is black and white because those are the two colors on Siena's crest.
















The inside of the church, looking at the altar.


















The church has a library (Piccolomini library), which was originally the sacristy. The frescos on the wall are unbelievably vivid and its incredible that they have never been retouched since they were painted in the 1490s. The room houses original choir books that are painted manuscripts. The music has only 4 lines on the staff instead of 5 and the notes are sqaure. Its really neat.






Somewhere along the way Siena was going to rebuild the church, to make it bigger, and started building the new facade, but stopped. So now there is this courtyard partially enclosed by what would have been the new part of the church. The sides were closed in with bricks and now has a museum with a lot of the church's original artwork.






The best part of the museum was the view from the roof. It was probably the most breathtaking part of my trip so far. The clouds were really dark, darker than these pictures, and the wind was blowing really hard. You could see for miles all of these quaint stone houses and beyond that the countryside.







A view to the countryside and the mountains. Its not in this picture, but to the right is a beautiful red brick church in the distance that looked like a medival castle. It was like being in a fairytale.










Me on the roof in front of the Torre del Mangia.













The Torre del Mangia in the Piazza del Campo.













The other side of the Piazza del Campo. Every year on July 2 and August 16 they have horse races around this piazza with horses representing the 17 different neighborhoods in Siena. Its a really big deal and all of Italy watches it. You could see the neighborhood flags of the horses throughout the city. We ate at a little cafe while it poured down rain and I had the best pizza I've had yet in Italy.