Siena's Weird Interiors
December 6, 2008From the outside, Siena's Duomo is unimpressive relative to the Duomo in Florence. It's not that the Siena Duomo is ugly, but how could it compete? The builders realized this, so they designed the interior to make the building appear much larger inside than it does outside. The walls and most columns are painted with black and
white horizontal stripes. It's not simply a cheap visual trick because the design is awe-inspiring on its own, and the illusion of depth is a bonus. The black and white horizontal stripes vanish into the horizon behind the statues in the alcoves. From the ground, I had tremendous difficulty making sense of the space I inhabited. It
was like living in an M.C. Escher sketch.
Labels: siena
Posted by Luke Teaford at 9:41 AM 0 comments