As I make my way over to my patient I continue to walk through the streets of Siena, and cannot help but notice the Siena Cathedral. Despite all the ugliness smeared across the city by the disease, the Siena Cathedral’s magnificence continues to shine brightly. From what I’m able to witness, its grand exterior with its hexagonal dome, tall bell tower, and black and white striped marble is enough to marvel at. However, my father once visited this very cathedral, he was permitted to pray in its halls and he could not stop praising its interior beauty even years after his brief visit. The cathedral holds art from some of our most incredible painters, Duccio’s Maesta and Nicola Pisano’s Pulpit. My father was specifically a fan of the Maesta. According to him, the large panel painting contains a large depiction of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. “It’s as if he can look right into my soul, tesoro!” he’d exclaim. He would boast about the detail etched into Jesus’s cloth and the angels in the background, the rich blue dye (that must’ve cost a fortune) covering the Virgin Mary, and the detailed upper and bottom panels that illustrated Mary’s life. He told me that if I ever came across this Cathedral, it would be a crime not to sit and admire every last part of it. Unfortunately, the Siena Cathedral among countless other churches, went into lockdown almost immediately after the plague started to sink its teeth into our neighborhoods, leaving people to fend for themselves.