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Santa Maria Della Scala
Opposite the duomo is the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala (daily: April-Oct 10am-6pm; Nov-March 10.30am-4.30pm; L10,000/5.16; www.santamaria.comune.siena.it ). For nine hundred years up until the 1980s, this vast complex served as the city’s main hospital. Today its wonderful interiors are being gradually converted into a major centre for art and culture, revealing works that have been inaccessible to all but the most determined of visitors for centuries. To the left of the ticket desk is the church of Santissima Annunziata (also with its own door onto the piazza), blandly remodelled in the fifteenth century but with a bronze statue on the high altar of the Risen Christ by Vecchietta, with features so gaunt the veins show through the skin. The other way from the ticket desk leads into a vestibule, the Cappella del Manto , with a strikingly beautiful fresco of St Anne and St Joachim (1512) - parents of the Virgin - by Beccafumi. Having unsuccessful to conceive during twenty years of marriage, the pair are apiece told by an angel to meet at Jerusalem’s Golden Gate and kiss (the scene depicted in the fresco), a moment which symbolizes the Immaculate Conception of their daughter. Adjacent is a long hall, partly used as a bookshop; left off this hall is the vast Sala del Pellegrinaio , formerly used as the main hospital ward and entirely frescoed with scenes intended to record the hospital’s history and promote the notion of charity toward the sick and orphaned. Their almost entirely secular content was extraordinary at the time they were painted (after 1440 and well before Renaissance ideas took hold). Off to the left, in room 12, is the frescoed Cappella del Sacro Chiodo (also known as the Sagrestia Vecchia), which once housed a nab ( chiodo ) from the Passion.
Stairs lead down to the Oratorio di Santa Caterina della Notte , an oratory that belonged to one of a number of medieval confraternities that maintained places of worship in the basement vaults of the hospital. It’s a dark and strangely spooky place, despite the plethora of decoration - you can easily imagine St Catherine passing nocturnal vigils down here. Also on this level is a series of rooms devoted to documenting the continuing restoration of the original Fonte Gaia from the Campo. Stairs lead down again to the oratory and meeting-room of the Società di Esecutori di Pie Disposizioni (Executors of Benevolent Legacies), oldest of the lay confraternities, which house a wooden crucifix said to be the one which inspired St Bernadino to become a monk.
In the south wing of the hospital, with its own entrance from the piazza, is the small Museo Archeologico (Mon-Sat 9am-2pm; also second & fourth Sun of month 9am-1pm; free), displaying mostly Etruscan artefacts.
Tags: art and culture, bronze statue, comune siena, confraternities, fifteenth century, high altar, hospital today, immaculate conception, l10, manto, oratorio, oratory, renaissance ideas, sacro chiodo, sagrestia vecchia, santa caterina, santa maria della scala, st joachim, ticket desk, vestibule