“Facciatone”

Perhaps the most memorable part of the Siena’s incredible Duomo isn’t in the Duomo at all, but the grand façade just outside of it.

During the Middle Ages, Siena in constant competition with its arch rival, Florence, and wanting to prove their power and wealth, entered into the competition for the largest Duomo, that would be larger than even St. Peter’s in Rome.
The plan would turn the existing Duomo, elaborate and grand in its own right, into the small cross section of an immense new cathedral the likes of which the world has never seen.Plans were drawn up (Lando di Piero), construction began (1340 under the supervision of Giovanni D’Agostino, sculptor and architect), and the black plague arrived (1348), decimating Europe and reducing the population of Siena to approximately to one third its prior size.

Construction was halted in June 1357, in part due to the bubonic plague, and in part due to structural difficulties which showed the new constructions wasn’t sound.

To this day, the grand façade shows above the surrounding buildings and the skeleton of an abbey that never came to be delineates a peculiar open piazza with slender columns embedded within the walls of adjoining buildings.

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