Tina Cervone, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago, had the pleasure of presenting a lecture by Luca Bonomi, President of the Dante Alighieri Society of Siena, on Tuesday of this week at the University of Chicago, with the help of Francesca Puggioni.
Professor Bonomi’s lecture, Secret Siena: Discovering the Hidden Treasures of the Medieval Town, was a fascinating look into two very different, very important aspects of Italy’s beloved medieval town. The first part of the lecture provided insight into the practical - a system of canals that was built in the 13th and 14th centuries to provide water to residents - while the second half provided insight into the sublime - Professor Bonomi gave us an analysis of the pavement of Siena’s famous Duomo. Two very different creations that have more in common then it would seem at first glance, for neither could have been realized without vision, tenacity, brilliant engineers and artists.
The Bottini canal network, Siena’s underground water supply system, is a little like an underground town. Made up of twenty-five kilometers of channels, the system worked by having rainwater, which seeped through the compressed sand that Siena is built on, captured in a series of communicating vessels and then channeled to people’s living quarters. Because connecting to this canal system and having water flow to one’s home was expensive, seven public fountains were built for less well-off residents.
The Bottini water system was functional until World War II, and the water in the seven fountains still comes from Bottini. Because this canal network is as fragile as it is important, only one hundred people per year are allowed inside to study it. In order to allow more people to appreciate this marvel, Siena is creating a museum dedicated to water.
In the second half of the Secret Siena journey, after analyzing Siena’s foundation, Professor Bonomi went on to explore the town’s famous gothic Duomo, and in particular the pavement mosaics which can be seen in their entirety only in the month of September every year. These mosaics took three hundred years to complete. A governing board, comprised of Siena’s intellectual elite, decided on the narrative that would be presented in the mosaics. The coherence and unity of the project makes one think that board members had a clear vision of the spiritual path that they wanted their citizens to take upon entering the church. The story told through the mosaics concentrates on Old Testament figures such as Elijah, the heroic prophet, who acts as a link to Christianity. The religious lesson culminates in the alter devoted to the Virgin Mary.
