A Month in Siena

...How Hisham Matar Teaches Us to Notice the World.

I am re-reading A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar, about the time he spent in Siena immersing himself in the works of the Sienese School of Painting, and I have the same reaction I did the first time. Some books we read with our eyes. Others we feel with our whole selves. A Month in Siena is one of those books you feel. Beautifully written, it includes full-color reproductions of the artworks, letting us look at the paintings with Matar and turning reading into a fully sensorial experience.

Siena is a small city in Italy, full of history. Its streets are narrow, with restricted access to motor vehicles. Siena is a city to walk.

For Matar, the city is not just a background. As we follow him walking its streets, we notice the same small details he does: the sunlight on the rooftops, the quiet of empty streets, the way time seems to slow down, similar to what I feel in this lazy summer in Barcelona.

Matar went to Siena to spend a month simply looking at the work of the Sienese School of Painting, created in the 13th and 14th centuries by artists like Duccio, Simone Martini, and the Lorenzetti brothers. His fascination with the School began when he was 19, exiled in London, at a time when his father, an opponent of the Libyan government, went missing. It was then that Matar began visiting the National Gallery at lunchtime, spending an hour just looking at a single painting.

So the book is as much about Matar as it is about art. It tells a story of identity and the inner self.

Matar’s writing is calm. He lets us pause, look, and think. When he writes about sunlight on a fresco or the silence in a church, we feel it too.

The book is also about the art of looking. In his own words:

“A picture changes as you look at it and changes in ways that are unexpected. I have discovered that a painting requires time.”

Today, we see many images every day, but we rarely stop to notice them. Matar shows that careful observation can change how we feel and think, helping us understand both the world and ourselves more deeply. Reading him reminds us that looking at art is also a way of looking at ourselves.

Reading the book, it is hard not to want to go to Siena, walk its streets, sit in its churches, and see the paintings in person.

Siena is definitely my next destination, but in the meantime, I can visit the city through Matar’s words. That is the magic of books: they take us to faraway places while we sit on our sofas. They can travel through time as well.

And let us not forget the power of good writing. It is amazing how such a small book, telling a small story about a small city, can spark so many emotions.

In the end, A Month in Siena is not only about art or about Matar. It is also about us, the readers. It reminds us that beauty is always close, waiting for us to notice it. We do not need to be in Siena to practice the art of looking. We can begin here, wherever we are, by allowing ourselves to be present. That, perhaps, is the true message of this story, that by slowing down and paying attention, we can live more fully.