I was walking through the winding, cobblestone streets of Siena on a hot June afternoon when the realization struck: I was living in Italy. I spent this past summer in Siena, a city that shares my name. My mind often wanders back to those streets as I pore over my Latin vocabulary and declensions (if you know you know) in the L&B reading room in Sterling.
Italy taught me to slow down. To spend two hours sipping coffee or an aperitivo with friends, letting conversation drift over laughter. To strike up conversations with strangers in the streets, discovering shared smiles across language barriers. To offer compliments freely — ciao bello! — to notice small ancient family crests tucked inside churches like hidden Easter eggs and listen to locals converse. I want to welcome others the way Italians do — with warmth, humor and openness.
I miss the therapeutic 25-minute walk to the Italian university — the old psych ward transformed into part of the college campus. On Yale’s campus, I look for that same journey in the 30 minute hike to Elena’s On Orange, the best spot for soft serve in New Haven. While I don’t intend to replicate it, I even look back fondly at the time my roommate and I got dropped off in the middle of the road because the bus missed our stop in Siena. Long story short, we hitchhiked with an Italian family for five minutes. Sorry, Mom.
Yale dining doesn’t even begin to rival my host mom Silvana’s cooking. I can still taste the richness of her pasta sauces, the subtle sweetness of her roasted tomatoes packed with Spanish rice and the homemade tiramisu with chunks of chocolate which melted in my mouth. I try to satisfy myself with the Franklin pizza.
I brought back mementos from Italy to keep pieces of my life there with me. A handmade horse figurine from my contrada, Chiocciola — the snail — sits on my desk. A contrada is the Italian name for each of the 17 different districts in the city of Siena. Every contrada has their own mascot and pride, a system similar to our own residential college rivalries. My horse figurine jockey rides bareback, wearing red and yellow silks. I often wear hoop earrings with dangling turquoise beads I bought in Tropea, a gorgeous coastal town in southern Italy. A small watercolor painting of Siena’s Piazza del Campo leans against my Directed Studies books from last year. I even kept a Hawaiian lei a random Italian guy gifted me one night. My fazzoletto, or scarf, from the Palio — an ancient, traditional Sienese horserace — hangs on my door handle. I brought back fragments of a life lived differently. E.M. Forster was right: Italy really purifies and ennobles all who visit her.
I remember walking past the Duomo, or Cathedral, di Siena many times, its white and dark green, almost black, striped marble façade reflecting sunlight. I remember the Palio when my friends and I stood shoulder to shoulder with cheering locals, swept up in the tradition and the roar of the crowd. I remember quiet mornings spent with a small Moleskine notebook, originally intended to chronicle my first year at Yale, now filled with stray thoughts and poems from Italy.
Siena has become a third home alongside San Diego and Yale. It’s a place I carry with me even when I’m thousands of miles away. Italy showed me a new way to live, a new way to notice, to savor, to connect. It feels as if it were only yesterday I was strolling through the winding streets of my new home in the sunlit Piazza del Campo, listening to the city — my city — breathe.
