St. Catherine was born in Siena on March 25th, 1347 and died in Rome on April 29th, 1380 where she was subsequently buried.

Knowing how much it would have pleased the people of Siena to have had at least the remains of their great fellow citizen among them, her former spiritual director, Blessed Raymond of Capua, on October 13th, 1383, secretely sent the head of the Saint to Siena.

The occasion to thus content the Sienese arose when the same Blessed Raymond wished to honour Catherine' s corpse by transfering it inside the Basilica of Holy Mary above Minerve from the cemetery of the Friars adjacent to the church where it had been originally placed in a simple tomb not very tightly scaled and exposed to the elements.

Dampness caused by rainwaters began to consume the body very quickly. It was, therefore, quite easy to disattach the head from the rest of the body without violence. There was no need to actually "decapitate" Catherine as some have mistakenly believed and written.

By means of tests carried out at the base of the skull the lack of the first few cerebral vertebrae has been discovered: this discovery confirmed the above-mentioned dissolution of the softer nerves and tendons which had already begun to take place, thus facilitating the separation of the head from the trunk.

For more than six centuries Siena has jealousy kept wathc over the sacred head of St. Catherine in the Basilica of St. Dominic. The Chapel where it has been placed is one of the most celebrated in the world thanks to the frescoes of Antonio Bazzi called "SODOMA", who was a disciple of Leonardo da Vinci, the elegant marble altar built by Giovanni di Stefano and another oil frescoe of Francesco Vanni.

Even Though the Dominican Fathers and the people of Siena have done their best to conserve and to honour the sacred Head Of St. Catherine, it has been involved in some dreadful mishaps. Once it was almost destroyed by a fire which ravaged the Church during the night of 3rd and 4th of December, 1531; and, another time, as it was being carried through the streets during a religious procession, some of the locals of the Fontebranda district attempted to steal the head and ended up by dropping it in the middle of the road! The reliquaries  containing the precious treasure were themselves changed from time to time. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the sacred relic was placed in a bronze urn adorned with crystals and finally, in 1947 was collocated in its current resting place with the help of donations from devout Catholics worldwide.

Doubts about the authenticity of head of St. Catherine have often been voiced in a few quarters, but solid proofs can be offered to show how the sacred relic has been in the custody of the Dominican Fathers ever since it was consigned to them. For centuries it has been kept quite literally under lock and key behind a massive grate: one copy of the key is in the hands of the local civil authorities, another is in the possession of the Archbishop of Siena and a third belongs to the Fathers themselves.

Furthermore, when the tomb of the Saint in the Church Of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome was opened in 1855, no head was found in it. And, radiological tests carried out on the relic by order of the local governing and ecclesiastical authorities on April 11th, 1947, have demonstrated that the cranium is rather small and of a delicate structure, typical of most Sienese women even today.

Notwithstanding the existence of so many works of art that beautify the Basilica of St. Dominic, what really attracts thousands of pilgrims and tourists to it evey year is the presence of the Reliquary containing the Sacred Head of St. Catherine.