I grandi cantieri della prima metà del Trecento sul colle del Duomo a Siena. La cattedrale e l’ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala

In the first decades of the fourteenth century, the religious and welfare institutions mostly characterize the so called Duomo hill in Siena, qualifying it as an unicum in the urban landscape, standing as an actual ‘religious pole’. In this historical period, the episcopal complex and the Santa Maria della Scala hospital stand out in both the sides of the hill, competing for the control of the spaces and owning most of the buildings and the construction lots. A series of ambitious building programs correspond to such a background, with an interrupted number of construction yards that, in few years, fully re-shaped the hill. Its topographic transformations, in fact, proceeds hand in hand with the general redefinition and progressive demolition of the pre-existent urban setting, in order to make room to the new impressive structures. These activities, especially as far as it regards the extension of the choir and the transept of the cathedral, resulted in massive works of ground preparation, as well as in the production, processing and assembly of the building material.