"Without light...
there is no architecture."
Louis I. Kahn

The Photographs

In the center of Tuscany, surrounded by a richly varied campagna of undulating hills and valleys defined at their crests by pini and cipressi, with darkened ruins as sentinels of the past punctuating distant views, lies the mystical city of Siena. Washed in the famous Italian luce and ombra, the earthscape supports this medieval hill town in a symbiotic concert of color and light, in the hues and patina as expressed in the allegorical frescoes of its thirteenth century painters.

Through layers of mist and haze rising from the moist earth, the diffused light reinforces repetitive folds of the earth, and the hill towns which remain have a presence unequaled in the landscape. The variables of the earth are telegraphed through the ever changing heights of the towers and the surrounding structures as they still conform to the lay of this ancestral land. On a clear day, from ramparts of fortified walls and tops of towers, infinite vistas lead as far as the eye can see.

This is the setting in which the urbane Comune di Siena reigns. At its heart, formed by three converging hills and designed in the Medieval Ages by an unusual group of civic minded individuals, can be found one of the most elegant urban open spaces in existence.

Within this place, the light evokes remembrances that make this place special, meaningful, and memorable with such strong spirit of place that entering the Campo is like coming home.