Siena

Siena is surrounded by an extensive network of roads ideal for walking or cycling. If you visit Piazza del Campo in the heart of Siena, and climb the Torre del Mangia, you will have a 360° view of the entire province. This is where the Palio horse race is held and centuries of art and history unfold. Siena is an unique, intact Renaissance town which has conserved not only its original medieval layout, but also its perfect symbiosis with the surrounding countryside. In reality, the land around Siena is made up of a number of different kinds of unique areas. Siena can be considered a bull’s eye where differing wedges of Tuscany come to meet. The handicraft tradition and local cuisine also help to appreciate this land, with its terracotta, crystal, wine, olive oil,and traditional cakes.

Nature lovers with refined tastes will be enticed by the hills of the Chianti region, whose subtle variations may be explored in a criss-cross right from the boundary with the Florentine province. The roads leading up north, from Poggibonsi to Castellina, gradually open onto the Chianti’s vineyards. The road east to Bettolle, is the quickest way to Umbria, the border between the Chianti and the magical Crete. In the south. the landscape reaches sublime harmony in the Val d’Orcia’s pure spaces. Montepulciano marks the passage to the Val di Chiana, which for many acts as the doorway to Siena’s countryside, given that it is crossed by A1 motorway from Rome to Florence. These are ancient lands full of history, legends, and Renaissance elegance. Here you sense the precious essence that Siena and its hinterlands have managed to conserve over the centuries: a unique lifestyle, a balance between appreciation of the past, and a desire to leave a tangible sign of what it means to live in Siena today.

Like a series of nesting boxes, Siena’s quaint Romanesque architecture envelops precious gilt altarpieces, its majestic noble palaces overlook tiny streets, and its forbidding walls stand silent guard over a community that lovingly preserves its traditions and history.

Just a few steps away from the medieval hospital Santa Maria della Scala, now an imposing cultural centre, lies the contemporary art gallery located in Palazzo delle Papesse.

Siena’s museums are blessed with the dreamy fourteenth-century work of Duccio di Boninsegna and the renowed Sienese school that he inspired, along with the work of Jacopo della Quercia, Francesco di Giorgio, Beccafumi and Sodoma.

Visitors have a wide selection of places to see, objects to purchase, or facts to learn: they may choose from examples of Etruscan pottery, gilt altarpieces by the early Sienese school, the evolution of share cropping on the land, the homespun drama of the Teatro Povero (Monticchiello), terracotta handicrafts, contemporary art, landscape research, the history to the woodlands in the Museum of the Woods, prehistoric studies to archaeological collections.

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