Today, our first day in Siena was jam-packed. We started out with a walk through the city to the main square, the Piazza del Campo. From there we split up to do drawings for a couple hours. The group then met back up on the hill to look at the exterior of Santa Maria della Scalla, one of the first institutionalized hospitals in Europe.

We then toured Siena's cathedral, the Duomo. Originally intended to be the largest cathedral in existance, construction was halted when most of the workers died during the Black Plague, and the ground was found to be incapable of holding the significant weight of such a building. The library of the Duomo holds lovely illuminated manuscripts, and the walls are painted in a style that gives the flat walls perspective as arched niches, changing from every point of the room. We were barely in time to see the mosaic floor uncovered - as the elaborate floors are covered in detailed mosaics depicting people and scenes from the Bible, it is only unveiled for the public two months out of the year, and we made it on the last day.

The group then headed up to the unfinished towers of one of the incomplete wings of the cathedral (I got left behind, but managed to find them and catch up). The rest of the day was ours, so Becky and I went to see the crypt of the Duomo, and then wandered around the town, taking pictures for a project we had been assigned. One of the churches that we wandered into was connected to a convent, and had as its relics two Incorruptibles - the preserved bodies of two beatified monks. (Centuries ago, for a church to be built, it had to be founded upon relics of a saint or martyr... more important churches recieved full bodies or skulls, while lesser churches got teeth or finger bones.) Most of us spent the rest of the day sketching and getting homework for tonight ready.