Download or read book A Month in Siena written by Hisham Matar and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return comes a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and life. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND EVENING STANDARD After finishing his powerful memoir The Return, Hisham Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists he had admired throughout his life, including Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he’d had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments. Including beautiful full-color reproductions of the artworks, A Month in Siena is about what occurred between Matar, those paintings, and the city. That month would be an extraordinary period in the writer’s life: an exploration of how art can console and disturb in equal measure, as well as an intimate encounter with a city and its inhabitants. This is a gorgeous meditation on how centuries-old art can illuminate our own inner landscape—current relationships, long-lasting love, grief, intimacy, and solitude—and shed further light on the present world around us. Praise for A Month in Siena “As exquisitely structured as The Return, driven by desire, yearning, loss, illuminated by the kindness of strangers. A Month in Siena is a triumph.”—Peter Carey

Download or read book The Scribe of Siena written by Melodie Winawer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Like Outlander with an Italian accent.” —Real Simple “A detailed historical novel, a multifaceted mystery, and a moving tale of improbable love.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review A NEW YORK POST MUST-READ BOOK Readers of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander and Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring…will be swept away by the spell of medieval Siena” (Library Journal, starred review) in this transporting love story and gripping historical mystery. Accomplished neurosurgeon Beatrice Trovato knows that her deep empathy for her patients is starting to impede her work. So when her beloved brother passes away, she welcomes the unexpected trip to the Tuscan city of Siena to resolve his estate, even as she wrestles with grief. But as she delves deeper into her brother’s affairs, she discovers intrigue she never imagined—a 700-year-old conspiracy to decimate the city. As Beatrice explores the evidence further, she uncovers the journal and paintings of the fourteenth-century artist Gabriele Accorsi. But when she finds a startling image of her own face, she is suddenly transported to the year 1347. She awakens in a Siena unfamiliar to her, one that will soon be hit by the Plague. Yet when Beatrice meets Accorsi, something unexpected happens: she falls in love—not only with Gabriele, but also with the beauty and cadence of medieval life. As the Plague and the ruthless hands behind its trajectory threaten not only her survival but also Siena’s very existence, Beatrice must decide in which century she belongs. The Scribe of Siena is the captivating story of a brilliant woman’s passionate affair with a time and a place that captures her in an impossibly romantic and dangerous trap—testing the strength of fate and the bonds of love.

Download or read book For the Love of Europe written by Rick Steves and published by Rick Steves. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After 40+ years of writing about Europe, Rick Steves has gathered 100 of his favorite memories together into one inspiring, award-winning collection: For the Love of Europe: My Favorite Places, People, and Stories. Join Rick as he's swept away by a fado singer in Lisbon, learns the dangers of falling in love with a gondolier in Venice, and savors a cheese course in the Loire Valley. Contemplate the mysteries of centuries-old stone circles in England, dangle from a cliff in the Swiss Alps, and hear a French farmer's defense of foie gras. With a brand-new, original introduction from Rick reflecting on his decades of travel, For the Love of Europe features 100 of the best stories published throughout his career. Covering his adventures through England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and more, these are stories only Rick Steves could tell. Wry, personal, and full of Rick's signature humor, For the Love of Europe is a fond and inspirational look at a lifetime of travel. Winner of the 2022 Society of American Travel Writers' Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award: Best Travel Book, Silver

Download or read book A Medieval Italian Commune written by William M. Bowsky and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1981-01-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Siena rivaled Florence in the arts throughout the 13th and 14th centuries: the important late medieval painter Duccio (1253?1319) was a Sienese, but worked across the peninsula, and the mural of "Good Government" by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Palazzo Pubblico, or town hall, is a magnificent example of late-Medieval/early Renaissance art as well as a representation of the utopia of urban society as conceived during that period. Siena was devastated by the Black Death of 1348, and also suffered from ill-fated financial enterprises. In 1355, with the arrival of Charles IV of Luxembourg in the city, the population rose and suppressed the government of the Nove (Nine), establishing that Dodici (Twelve) nobles assisted by a council with a popular majority. This was also short-lived, being replaced by the Quindici (Fifteen) reformers in 1385, the Dieci (Ten, 1386?1387), Undici (Eleven, 1388?1398) and Twelve Priors (1398?1399) who, in the end, gave the city's seigniory to Gian Galeazzo Visconti of Milan in order to defend it from the Florentine expansionism."--Wikipedia.

Download or read book OECD Territorial Reviews Siena Italy 2002 written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2002-07-05 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: OECD's territorial review of the Italian province of Siena.

Download or read book Siena written by Jane Tylus and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Siena: City of Secrets" is a charming, intimate portrait of this most secretive of cities, often overlooked by travelers to Italy. Part cultural history and intellectual memoir, part travelogue and guide book, Tylus writes with a novelist s flair, taking the reader on a quest of discovery through the well- and not-so-well-travelled roads and alleys of the ancient city. Today, Siena can appear on the surface standoffish, a bit static, and very old-fashioned, especially when compared to its larger, flashier cousins Roma and Firenze. But first impressions wear away as we learn from Tylus that Siena was, over the long view, an innovator among the cities of Italy: the first to pave its streets and main plaza (1298), the first to publicly fund its university (1321), the first to employ the promissory note (1720), the first to ban automobile traffic from its city center (1965), and much else. We also hear about Siena s great artistic and architectural past, hidden behind centuries of over painting and rebuilding, and about its resident apocryphal and not-so-apocryphal Saints. And about the distinctive characters of its different neighborhoods ( contrade ), exemplified in the highly competitive horserace that takes place annually in the city and that serves as both a dividing and a uniting force for the Sienese. Throughout we are guided by the assuring voice of a seasoned scholar with a gift for spinning a good story and with an eye for the telling detail, whether we are traveling Siena s modern highways or digging through ancient Etruscan tombs; or shadowing the path walked by medieval pilgrims; or tracking the city s financial history from its beginnings as the once-great center for commerce in the sixteenth century to its near collapse in January 2013; or celebrating literary giants Dante and Calvino or giants of the arena, Siena s Series A soccer team. A useful and entertaining guide for students of Italian culture (Tylus has written discursive, reader-friendly endnotes and included a full bibliography in the back matter), the book will also appeal to the traveler and tourist (virtual or otherwise) interested in learning more about this ancient, mysterious, reclusive citydespite itself."

Download or read book The Water Supply System of Siena Italy written by Michael P. Kucher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-28 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book reviews scholarly literature and archival sources including maps and diagrams, to better situate Siena's achievement in urban history and broadens our understanding of medieval technology and urban life.

Download or read book A History of Siena written by Mario Ascheri and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-08 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of Siena provides a concise and up-to-date biography of the city, from its ancient and medieval development up to the present day, and makes Siena’s history, culture, and traditions accessible to anyone studying or visiting the city. Well informed by archival research and recent scholarship on medieval Siena and the Italian city-states, this book places Siena’s development in its larger context, both temporally and geographically. In the process, this book offers new interpretations of Siena’s artistic, political, and economic development, highlighting in particular the role of pilgrimage, banking, and class conflict. The second half of the book provides an important analysis of the historical development of Siena’s nobility, its unique system of neighborhood associations (contrade) and the race of the Palio, as well as an overview of the rise and fall of Siena’s troubled bank, the Monte dei Paschi. This book is accessible to undergraduates and tourists, while also offering plenty of new insights for graduate students and scholars of all periods of Sienese history.

Download or read book The Preacher s Demons written by Franco Mormando and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1999-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When the city was filled with these bonfires, he then combed the city, and whenever he received notice of some public sodomite, he had him immediately seized and thrown into the nearest bonfire at hand and had him burned immediately." This story, of an anonymous individual who sought to cleanse medieval Paris, was part of a sermon delivered in Siena, Italy, in 1427. The speaker, the friar Bernardino (1380-1444), was one of the most important public figures of the time, and he spent forty years combing the towns of Italy, instructing, admonishing, and entertaining the crowds that gathered in prodigious numbers to hear his sermons. His story of the Parisian vigilante was a recommendation. Sexual deviants were the objects of relentless, unconditional persecution in Bernardino's sermons. Other targets of the preacher's venom were witches, Jews, and heretics. Mormando takes us into the social underworld of early Renaissance Italy to discover how one enormously influential figure helped to dramatically increase fear, hatred, and intolerance for those on society's margins. This book is the first on Bernardino to appear in thirty-five years, and the first ever to consider the preacher's inflammatory role in Renaissance social issues.

Download or read book Siena the City of the Virgin written by Titus Burckhardt and published by London ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1960 [c1958]. This book was released on 1960 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Italian Party written by Christina Lynch and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Newly married [in 1956], Scottie and Michael are seduced by Tuscany's famous beauty. But the secrets they are keeping from each other force them beneath the splendid surface to a more complex view of Italy, America, and each other. When Scottie's Italian teacher--a teenager with secrets of his own--disappears, her search for him leads her to discover other, darker truths about herself, her husband, and her country. Michael's dedication to saving the world from communism crumbles as he begins to see that he is a pawn in a much different game"--Amazon.com.

Download or read book Travel Like a Local Map of Siena written by Maxwell Fox and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Get Ready For The Adventure Of A Lifetime! Are you planning your next vacation abroad and you're ready to explore? Do you want to be prepared for everything? Are you ready to experience every new place you visit just like a local? Well, with this amazing Siena (Italy) travel map you're all set and ready to go! The Siena (Italy) map was carefully designed to give you amazing results and make traveling easier than ever. We make sure to constantly update our info to give you the most relevant and accurate information, so you will never get confused or frustrated during your Siena (Italy) trip. The map is very detailed and it will not only give you all the available roads and routes, but also the essential information to make your Siena (Italy) vacation unforgettable. In the map you can see all the available means of transport, bus stops and routes so you can always know how to get everywhere. And because we know that a vacation is not only about the roads and busses, the map gives you many options for eating, drinking and having a good time! We carefully marked all the restaurants, bars and pubs so you can always find one that is nearby. In the Siena (Italy) map you will also find the best places to go shopping, the most famous and must-see sights, churches and more. And if an emergency comes up, there are markings of police stations and hospitals everywhere for your convenience. Each kind of marking has a different color so you can easily navigate around the map and find exactly what you're looking for within seconds. The city is also organized in sections so you can better find your way around. So what are you waiting for? Pack your bags, get your map and let's get started! Just Click "Add To Cart Now"

Download or read book Siena Italy written by Roman Reynolds and published by . This book was released on 2019-12-04 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Siena, Italy. The History of the City, a Travel Guide for Tourism Does any country boast as many holiday destinations as Italy? The majesty of Rome, the beauty of Naples, the romance of Venice; all must-visit cities at some point in one's life. But even beyond the more storied names, Italy offers much to stir the soul. The small city of Siena, with a population of barely 50,000, is a classic hidden gem. Siena is most famous for its biannual horse race, the Palio. A forthcoming documentary on the Palio should heighten British interest in a truly unique event. If possible, time your visit around either the July or August races. However, even if you can't make the Palio, you'll find much to treasure. Siena is a truly beautiful city, all cobbled streets and tall, ancient buildings. The city is split into 17 districts all with their own names and colours and, as you walk the streets, you'll notice the flags change depending on which district you travel through. Unlike certain global megacities, Siena has a strong sense of identity. It will stay with you long after you depart. Siena is a city where the architecture soars, as do the souls of many of its visitors. Effectively a giant, open-air museum celebrating the Gothic, Siena has spiritual and secular monuments that have retained both their medieval forms and their extraordinary art collections, providing the visitor with plenty to marvel at. The city's historic contrade (districts) are marvellous too, being as close-knit and colourful today as they were in the 17th century, when their world-famous horse race, the Palio, was inaugurated. And within each contrada lie vibrant streets populated with artisanal boutiques, sweet-smelling pasticcerie (pastry shops) and tempting restaurants. It's a feast for the senses and an essential stop on every Tuscan itinerary.

Download or read book Painting in Late Medieval and Renaissance Siena 1260 1555 written by Diana Norman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The city of Siena, one of Italy's major artistic centers, was home to many celebrated painters, among them Duccio, Simone Martini, Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti, Sassetta and Beccafumi. This generously illustrated book provides a survey of Sienese painting from 1260 to 1555, an era of extraordinary artistic creativity in the Tuscan city. Art historian Diana Norman addresses the style and artistic technique of Sienese painters throughout the three centuries and explores why paintings were made, where they were originally seen, and how they were used and enjoyed by their audiences. The book focuses on works of art made for Siena itself, many of which are still to be seen within the city. Norman organizes the discussion around types of commissions and throughout the book situates the paintings within the context of the political, social, and religious circumstances of late medieval and renaissance Siena.

Download or read book Natural Light and the Italian Piazza written by Sandra Davis Lakeman and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lakeman (architecture, California Polytechnic State U.) discusses design elements and the element of light in the medieval architecture of Italy and examines the relationship between space and light and the way we experience them, focusing on Siena's Piazza del Campo. Includes some 90 color photos a

Download or read book Popular Government and Oligarchy in Renaissance Italy written by Christine Shaw and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-10-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the nature of popular government and oligarchy in towns and cities throughout Renaissance Italy, and of the reasons why broadly-based civic governments were losing ground.

Download or read book Confession and Criminal Justice in Late Medieval Italy written by Lidia Luisa Zanetti Domingues and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In medieval Italy the practice of revenge as criminal justice was still popular amongst members of all social classes, yet crime also was increasingly perceived as a public matter that needed to be dealt with by the government rather than private citizens. Confession and Criminal Justice in Late Medieval Italy sheds light on this contradiction through an in-depth comparison of lay and religious sources produced in Siena between 1260 and 1330 on criminal justice, conflict, and violence. Confession and Criminal Justice in Late Medieval Italy: argues that religious people were an effective pressure group with regards to criminal justice, thanks both to the literary works they produced and their direct intervention in political affairs, and that their contributions have not received the attention they deserve. It shows that the dichotomy between theories and practices of 'private' and of 'public' justice should be substituted by a framework in which three models, or discourses, of criminal justice are recognised as present in medieval Italian communes, with the addition of a specifically religious discourse based on penitential spirituality. Although the models of criminal justice were competing, they also influenced each other.