Siena - away from the Palio

Ants and I had decided long before the weekend was over that we'd love to come back for the non-Palio side of Siena too. It's not just for the amazing dishes of offal (my 'bruschetta toscana' was definitely more liver than kidney), the wild boar pappardelle, the red wines (August is mostly too hot for them anyway), the panforte cake sold in every deli, or the amazing icecream place that we went back to at least twice. There's a sense of people living very modern lives in this oldworld town full of winding streets, a balancing of past and present that feels perfectly comfortable. Accoustic musicians playing tunes by a 900 year old fountain (Fontebranda), market stalls in the 600 year old marketplace, which probably sell cheap knockoff watches. We want to see it on a non-Palio weekend.
Then there's St Catherine, patron saint of Italy (alongside St Francis), who hailed from here. We went for a walk along the street she was born in, allegedly the youngest of 25 children (ouch, her poor mother). I confess to a perverse sense of delight in finding out what a crazy old bint she was - fasting from the age of six to convince her da to let her become a nun, and then sucking the pus out of the wounds of the sick she tended. She finally collapsed, wasted but euphoric, at the age of 33, having campaigned to bring the pope back to Rome from Avignon. Catherine's letters - (more than 300 of which survive) have been branded by Wikipedia as 'one of the great works of early Tuscan literature'. Hmm. I've read bits of them and think she sounds like a religious fanatic. But apparently that was quite the thing to be in those days (she died in 1380) - at least she escaped a better fate than that crazy Savonarola in Florence. And in any case, that a woman of her station could read and write at all (her father was a mere dyer) - let alone get listened to, let alone become one of the most influential figures of her time... well it's nothing short of remarkable.
Then again, crazy views have worked for Neil Mitchell and Derryn Hinch. Thank heavens newspapers weren't invented in her day. Or blogging. She'd have been all over YouTube
But I digress.
The point is, Siena has much more to offer - from stunning views of the surrounding hills, to her black and white striped marble Duomo. We will definitely be back, well before the next Palio in July.

Although we might well be back then too.