SANTA
MARIA DELLA SCALA:
archaeology and history under the old hospital
address:
Piazza del Duomo
schedules: from 16/03 to 31/10 and from 23/12 to 07/01:
10:00-18:00;
from 01/11 to 15/03: 10:30-16:30.
The history of Siena seen after the recent archaeological
excavations
Siena coverts a series of hills that, since
the prehistoric age, have been interested from more stable
installations and it is really on one of the most ancient
areas in the city and on the top of one of the tallest necks
that, on to end some XI century, the construction of the hospital
of Saint it is initiated Maria of the Staircase: a complex
building, that has preserved up to our days numerous and multiform
traces of a more millennial history.
Up to few years ago, the knowledge of the most ancient phases
of the life of the city was limited to few data, particularly
to few graves that allowed only to hypothesize the presence
of an inhabited area, of which however didn't seem to keep
himself/herself/themselves trace. During these last years,
instead, the results of the countries of excavation conducted
by the Department of Archaeology and History of the Arts of
the university in Siena, of agreement with the Archaeological
Superintendence in Tuscany, the institution Saint Maria of
the Staircase and the Commune in Siena and in collaboration
with the Department of History of the university in Siena,
they have radically modified the situation, bringing to the
light abundant testimoniaze of the city past, exceptionally
preserved and preserved by the usury of the centuries below
the modern floorings of the hospital.
The
most ancient traces of life: the etruscan period
The
traces related to the most ancient periods are often difficult
to be individualized on the ground, because numerous they
are the interventions that can subsequently have her destroyed;
to greater reason the operation of recognition and interpretation
it does even more him complex, if it deals with the rests
of wood huts and mud that, once abandoned and you collapse,
they don't leave that the imprints it engraved on the ground
from the poles of support of the structure.
Nevertheless, below the ex garden of the Saint Maria of the
Staircase, to few meters of distance from the ditch of Sant'Ansano,
the patient job of the archaeologists has allowed to bring
to the light the little that stays of a great hut, risalente
even to age etrusca. It had to treat him of a simple construction,
with a base in stone and an elevated in earth, prepared to
half coast along the southern slope of the hill on which today
the Cathedral rises, in dominant position in comparison to
the valley.
 The
simplicity of the construction materials employed doesn't
have however to make to think about a hovel lived by deprived
men of means; contrarily, the presence of fragments of bucchero
and painted ceramics elegantly, that have been recovered inside
the hut or in his/her proximities, it is certainly sign of
the elevated social rank which belonged who has lived then
in this part of the città.E' difficult to imagine the
panorama that surrounded this hut, but it is possible to sustain
certainly that it didn't deal with an isolated structure:
other traces in fact, even if even more transitory of the
first ones, they allow to integrate the scenery, hypothesizing
the presence, for the same period, of other residences, prepared
on a good part of the hilly slope.
The Roman epoch
The southern slope of the hill owed,
since the antiquity, to have a strong inclination, the same
one that is easily today still intuibile if, made to mentally
disappear the imposing hospital masonries, it strives us to
gather accents him gradient that the plaza of the Cathedral
separates from the valley of the ditch of Sant'Ansano. And'
to Roman epoch that seems to go up again the first important
work of regularization, an intervention that partly it destroyed
the inhabited etrusco, to create ample terrazzamenti on which
a wide installation developed him on the whole slope of the
hill. Residences, gardens and zones ortives were alternated
along the terraces engraved on the costone of sandstone, while
the access to the area happened, with every probability, from
south, along a series of tornanti that you/they went up again
the hill.
And' to a moment of few following, the so-called slow-ancient
period, that you/they seem to be able to be dated the most monumental
rests of the Roman epoch, constituted by two masonries faced
semicircolari, that defines a building to elliptic plant, that
developed him for around 15 meters width, in an almost coincident
position with that of the hut etrusca, whose rests preserve
him, in fact, few about ten more meters to valley.
The data emerged by the excavations are still in progress of
study and they don't allow to give a certain interpretation
of this imposing construction but the recovery of fragments
of pipings in terracotta utilzzate to heat the environments,
besides the recovery of a big number of lastrine of covering
in stones of various colors, they make to think about the presence
of a great thermal plant, that had to develop awry.
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The data emerged by the excavations
are still in progress of study and they don't allow to
give a certain interpretation of this imposing construction
but the recovery of fragments of pipings in terracotta
utilzzate to heat the environments, besides the recovery
of a big number of lastrine of covering in stones of various
colors, they make to think about the presence of a great
thermal plant, that had to develop beside. |
Rests of a masonry to plant semicircolare, that delimited
to east the great building to plant semicircolare |
The high middle-age
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| Traces
left on the ground by poles in wood that you/they defined
the perimeter of a tall-medieval hut |
Passing years, the great building
fell in disuse and collapsed, but the frequentation of the
area, even though in different ways, didn't stop. The greater
part of the stones of the collapse were recovered in fact
and the building was used as a mine of building material to
employ in different constructions that were realized in the
proximities. The low fence in masonry, which was reduced by
now the imposing construction of Roman age, also in a first
moment had been used to delimit an ample area where was realized
a cemetery.
The centuries that followed saw a slow accumulate of thick
layers of black earth, rich of organic material, that ended
up hiding completely to the sight that little signs that still
remained of the most ancient phases, provoking, in the meanwhile,
a gradual raising of stamping plans.
On
these new levels of life they come back soon to build new
huts in wood, from the lengthened basis: after so many years
and so much history, the aspect of the hill returned therefore
to recall to the memory the image of its first phases of life.
The low medioevo
 |
| One
of many underground environments recovered during the
archaeological excavations |
On
the ancient terrazzamentis, that in the beginnings of the low
medioevo still engraved deeply the hilly slope, conferring him
an aspect in which always the hand of the man was visible, it
appeared then for the first time, a series of narrow and dark
hollow, that pierced the terraces of sandstone. It dealt with
caves and burrows that, going down long holds stairways, also
dig them in the sandstone, brought to one or more underground
environments. They generally composed of an only room from the
most regular form, that was often endowed with one or two niches
in which the oil lamps could be supported, while the presence
of a cross, always engraved in beautiful sight, it had to recall
the divine protection on how much in that environments they
lived or perhaps on how much you/they had laboriously dug them.
And' to this same period, or to the beginnings of the low medioevo,
that it's begun the construction of the hospital, in a moment
in which Siena, thanks to the passage of the crowdy Francigena
street, seemed to enjoy of a new important economic development.
The complex will develop him beginning from a first nucleus
built on the plaza, exactly in front of the staircase of access
in the cathedral, from which she will take the name of Saint
Maria of the Staircase.
The widest part of the structure will be built then in the following
centuries, widening itself for following bands of occupation
of the hill, from the high one downward and from mountain toward
valley, originally englobing open areas, demolishing elevated
that were of obstacle to the new organization of the spaces
and filling all that voids created by the man for its preceding
necessities.
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A
moment of excavation in the summer 1999
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On
what has emerged from the excavations, initiated in 1998 and
still in progress, it will is necessary to reflect for a long
time, integrating the specialistic job of archaeologists,
historians and anthropologists, but how much has emerged till
now it is already enough to show the unbelievable cognitive
potentiality of the underlying archaeological deposit the
hospital.
Dott.ssa
Chiara Saffioti
Dott.ssa Silvia Pallecchi
(responsible of the archaeological investigations within S.
Maria della Scala)
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