Basilica di San Domenico

Siena's Dominicans raised this austere brick hall on the Camporegio hill between 1226 and 1265, and the city grew around it. Inside, the plain Cistercian Gothic shell conceals the relics of St Catherine of Siena and a run of paintings that traces Sienese art from Guido da Siena to Sodoma.

Why it matters

Catherine of Siena prayed in this nave, received her habit among the Mantellate in the side chapel known as the Cappella delle Volte, and developed her spiritual and diplomatic work in the Dominican setting. The basilica preserves her head as its central relic. Architecturally, the church exemplifies the mendicant ideal in Siena: a vast single nave with exposed timber trusses, built of local brick and deliberately plain on the exterior, with chapels within.

What to notice

The Cappella delle Volte projects from the church's left flank and partly obscures the facade, which is marked by a large oculus. Its fresco by Andrea Vanni, a disciple of Catherine, is an early portrait of the saint. The Catherinian chapel holds her head relic, separated from her body in Rome after her death in 1380 by her confessor Raymond of Capua and brought to Siena in 1384. Giovanni di Stefano's 1469 marble altar was commissioned to receive it; Sodoma's 1526 frescoes, including the Ecstasy and Fainting of St Catherine, surround the space. Sodoma also painted two large canvases in the basilica, and Francesco di Giorgio's Adorazione del Bambino is part of its collection. In the left transept, a chapel preserves Guido da Siena's signed Maestà, whose relationship to Duccio has been debated. The fourteenth-century crypt, 1425 cloister and lowered, crenellated bell tower of 1340—truncated after the 1798 earthquake—complete the complex's layered history.

Context and history

The Dominicans reached Siena in 1220 and received the Camporegio land from Fortebraccio Malavolti in 1225. Construction ran from 1226 to 1265, with enlargement through the fourteenth century and the building reaching its final form by 1465. Fires in 1443, 1456 and 1531, a Spanish military occupation in 1548–52 and the 1798 earthquake left marks on the church. Restorations between 1941 and 1963 removed Baroque additions and included Bruno Cassinari's stained glass. In 1925 Pope Pius XI conferred the rank of minor basilica. The hillside church stands above Fontebranda, the district associated with Catherine's family home, linking its architecture to the city's Catherinian heritage.