Pienza (Siena): a pope, a dream, the mistery in a square

Pienza, a stone mirage in the desolate and bare splendour of the landscape between the Sienese Crete and the Orcia Valley. Appearance that you can touch, run through by foot in every its part. How is it possible that a little village as this, isolated in the Tuscan contryside, keeps trasures of such importance? A moderate grandness, with no excesses, placed aroud the not large central square, strangely trapezium shaped to enlarge with the perspective the buildings that circumbscribe it. All seems deliberately created to confuse the visitor, like these imposing castles that in the fables rise from the nothing in the most unexpected sites. Why?

To tell the true, Pienza is a miracle. A miracle created by the love of a pope for his native village. And represents the only attempt in the fifteenth century to build that "ideal city" about which all the most important artists and intellectuals of the times. Pienza was built during five years, only five years. The some number of years of the pontificate of Pio II, in the world Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who wanted transform the native and little village of Corsignano even in a town, named Pienza, and the summer seat of Papacy. Surely, this choice did not make the powerful Roman cardinals very happies, But they put a good face upon the pope's will, that seemed to them only a whim. And submitted,even if against their's grain, to build ther summer palaces in this sort of Vatican in the countryside.

But he, the pope Pio II, ignoring all, went remorselessly on. To realize his dream, he, that was a man of great culture, an humanist that often went in for mythological stories, that had the savour of paganism, instead of the Gospel; and that was himself a poet and a writer for the theatre inspired by the classics. Probably, he thought that there was not a great difference between the Rome of the times, which was inabhited by only some ten thousands people and where flocks of sheeps peacefully pastured in the middle of the famous monuments of the antiquity.

Elected pope during the conclave of 1458, the Piccolomini lost no time. He immediately called Bernardo Gamberelli da Settignano, known as "the Rossellino", a great architect that was trained in Florence in the school of Leon Battista Alberti, one of the founders of the Renaissance. The Rossellino, the year after, had already completed the project and began the construction of the great buildings and palaces that would have constituted the fulcre of the future ideal city of Pienza, around the beautiful central trapezium shaped square. An overturned trapezium, an artifice to enlarge, thanks to the perspective, its dimensions. A necessity due to the not great space available.

Pio II himself, in his "Commentaries", wrote that, when the Pope's palace and the Cathedral were finished, he noticed to the Rossellino the great difference between the preventive requested (about ten thousand florins) and the sum really spent, that had abundantly exceeded the fifty thousand florins. But Pio II did not rebuke him for this. On the contrary, he said: "You did well, Bernardo, to hide us the real sum required to construct all these buildings, If you had told us the true, I do not know if I became convinced to a so enormous expense; and this palace and this cathedral, the most splendid in all Italy, maybe, had not been erected". So, to express his gratitude, he recompensed the architect with a life annuity and other important appointments.

Pio II was grateful to the Rossellino also because he had shared the pope's hurry in realizing the great project of Pienza. Even exceeding, as testified by the plan of the splendid Piccolomini Palace that is not perfectly squared because on the back, the side on the beautiful garden from which you can enjoy an unforgettable landscape, a little part was added to contain the kitchen which, incredibly, was forgetten in the original design. And this, was not the only "incident" during the works. The colossal Cathedral, in fact, was built, in this apsidal part, on a downhill ground that showed immediately to be rather unstable. And, already during its construction, this part began to give way, lowering the floor and creating worrying cracks in the walls. The Rossellino acted as if nothing had happened and so, probably, the pope Piccolomini himself did. The cracks were filled up and the walls were plastered. After, for centuries they worked to solve the problem, but never definitely.

Still today, approaching Pienza from the valley, the little town with the snow-white octagonal bell tower of the Cathedral that overhangs the elegant buildings, appears vaguely surreal, while all around the incredible colours of this part of Tuscan countryside are are exploding, with the dark green of ghe the cypresses that stand up in the apparently infinite horizon. Maybe, the Pio II and Bernardo's great project was not completely realized. And the result of those five, extraordinary years is concentrated in the square and very close to it. A square that disoncerts, with its crazy geometry that upsets every certitude; with its beautiful fifteenth-century well strangely situated not in the center, but in a lateral position, even near the walls of the great Piccolomini palace. And then, the Commune palace with its brick tower and the colonnaded portico; the Bishop palace, built and inhabited by the cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, that some decade after became pope himself: the scandalous Alexander VI, with his even more scandalous children. And then, that enigmatic circle in the middle of the chess-board. The centre of the world.

But the thing that really disconcerts is the façade of the Cathedral, with the great surface too much solemn-looking and that in the tympanum displays ostentatiously the insignia of Pio II. But something does not seem right. The niches are empty, with no statues; the memorial tablets have no inscriptions and remain inexplicably whites. A sensation of void, of absence that you can find also in the inside. And yet, was the pope himself that, even with a Papal bull, forbade every addition or modification to that temple that he had so strongly wanted, under penalty of excommunication. And so happened. But the reason remains a mystery. As this incredible place, with these buildings that seem ideated to face eternity, but are situated on a ground that seems to desire to gave way and carry away with it this stone dream. An unstable, century aged, equilibrium, but how long it will last?

Let's leave the square and its enigmas, then, let's descend, along the rock that keeps Etruscan tombs, to reach in the green the ancient curch of Corsignano, with the modest and quiet beauty that only some Romanic buildings have. And its strange circular bell tower that looks like the Byzantine ones. A Church of very ancient origines, never cleared up. The side-portal, richly decorated, has an archaic fascination, with the sculputures scarcely legible that calls to mind the pages of the medieval bestiaries. But if we come back to the front façade, we are strucked by the presence, over the entrance, of a statuette instead of the little column that usually divides the mullioned window with two lights; a figure representing a woman, decidedly out of place in this sacred site, and with a vaguely sensual posture. Who represents? A siren, or maybe the Mother Goddess? Probably, it is symbol of fertility, a pagan element inserted there we do not know why and for what reason. But it seems to come from the most remote depths of the time. To confuse us more, to increase the mystery in this remote place of the universe.