2 Best Sights in Tuscany, Italy

Routine excavation work revealed this crypt, which had been hidden for centuries under the grand pavimento (floor) of the Duomo and was opened to the public in 2003. In the late 13th century, an unknown master executed the crypt's breathtaking frescoes, which have sustained remarkably little damage and have retained their original colors. The Deposition/Lamentation proves that the Sienese school could paint emotion just as well as the Florentine school—and that it did so some 20 years before Giotto.

According to legend, the cemetery—a walled structure on the western side of the Piazza dei Miracoli—is filled with earth that returning Crusaders brought back from the Holy Land. Contained within are numerous frescoes, notably The Drunkenness of Noah, by Renaissance artist Benozzo Gozzoli (1422–97), and the disturbing Triumph of Death (14th century; artist uncertain), whose subject matter shows what was on people's minds in a century that saw the ravages of the Black Death.