Sienna (or 'Siena', if you insist... (mumble...)

All this talk of Venice has given me itchy fingers, and Cher mentioning Sienna has made them even itchier.

A few years ago, we visited Sienna, and stayed in a little hotel which was quite close to the church where St. Catherine of Sienna is buried. Well, not so much buried as chopped up into lots of little pieces and put on display around the building, so greatly was she adored.

I never quite understood how Catherine achieved her status as a saint - as far as I can make out, all she did was turn up to the church every day, act like a mad woman and generally make herself a nuisance. If you did that in any church today, the police would be called within 5 minutes, and you would end up sectioned for your own - and other's - safety. You would then be cured of your sainthood - free at the point of delivery on the NHS - and only allowed back in if you promised to behave yourself and carried a note from your GP.

But there was no state health-care back in the 15th century, so Catherine went to the church every day, prostrated herself at the altar, screamed and had visions, harangued other worshipers etc. for about 30 years, until she was finally summoned by the object of her devotion; then was carefully dissected by the technicians of Sienna and distributed amongst the parishioners as equally as possible. There is a tiny marble plaque set into the floor of the church and on it is a depiction of a heart. This is where they placed that particular organ - about 100 feet away from her head, which is on full display behind bars which I could not decide were there to keep us out, or her in.

The old, walled town of Sienna itself looks pretty much exactly the same as it did in the 15th century - if you added a T.V. arial to every house depicted in those dream-like medieval paintings, then the 21st century picture would be complete.

The place is known principally for two things - the Pallio (the mad, uphill horse race on the slippery cobbles of the main piazza during which the riders get whipped as much as the horses) and the colour. Sienna - thanks to the very high iron content in the soil, stone and marble - is sienna coloured. This gives the impression that the whole town is permanently bathed in the light of a glorious sunset, and some of the best photos of the place were taken when the town was, indeed, bathed in the light of a glorious sunset. These photographs verge on the surreal, such is the intensity of the deep, orange-red.

There is another regional obsession which will not escape your attention if you visit Sienna, and that is flag-chucking. I forget how many families the small part of the old town is divided into, but each region has it's own emblem, and this emblem is proudly emblazoned on a flag. The various areas are fiercely territorial and vehemently competitive, which explains the ferocity of the Pallio and why some losing jockeys are taken away for questioning after the race, only to appear with two black eyes and missing teeth, about half an hour later. Some used to disappear for ever in the old days, but this is now a thing of the past since the creation of the E.U. The Shakespearian gang-culture of medieval Italy is the origin of the Mafia.

Not content with walking around the street, simply throwing their flags into the air and catching them, every chucker wants to be the best at his job, so you will go down a back-street on a warm evening, and find a sixteen year-old youth actually practicing moves whilst chucking his flag. Nothing is left to chance. Every evening on local T.V., you will see someone who looks like the elderly mayor, formally welcoming young adults and newly-weds into the civic family, and after a kiss on the hand, he gives each of them some sort of secret-looking sign in a quick, almost furtive little gesture.

The massive 'town hall' at the bottom of the square houses several lower levels of dungeons that sink about 100 feet into the side of the hill, and these also served as store-rooms in time of siege. On the other side of this towering wall there is a series of kitchen gardens which look exactly the same as they did when they were first cultivated, about 700 years ago.

The townspeople grow rows of fruit and vegetables here, and they look very much like the British allotments of WW2 - 'Dig For Victory' was a much older concept than 1940. We went to a display of falconry in one of these gardens, and the highlight of the display was the falconer - dressed in medieval garb - swinging a lump of meat on a piece of string around his head, trying to attract a large hawk which was perched high up on the ramparts of the town hall, about a quarter of a mile away.

Everyone gasped as the hawk took off and started a low and casual swoop toward the meat, but at the last moment it dived into a neighboring plot of cabbages, and the falconer spent about 2 hours trying to coax it out. A rather undignified ending to an epic performance.

I found it hard to concentrate on the falconry show, because an absolutely massive owl had taken an interest in me and had waddled up the grass bank to where I sat, then stood about 2 feet away from me, staring into my eyes unblinkingly for a full hour as I tried to take in the show. I thought at the time it was pointless to try and move away, as I think it would have - just like Mr L - waddled a little closer again. I was also a bit scared about an unprovoked attack...