All the monuments in Siena
The landmarks and masterpieces worth planning a day around.
Duomo di SienaSiena CathedralThe inlaid marble floor, Nicola Pisano's pulpit, the unfinished Nuovo Duomo wall, Duccio's MaestàSiena Cathedral, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, was built mostly between the 1220s and the 1380s in banded black and white marble that repeats across the whole complex. Its floor is the real astonishment: 56 inlaid and engraved marble panels made between the 14th and 19th centuries, most kept covered and uncovered only for a few weeks each summer to protect them from footsteps. Nicola Pisano carved the pulpit between 1265 and 1268 with crowded, dramatic New Testament scenes, one of the first great works of Gothic sculpture in Italy. Ambitious plans in the 1330s to triple the building's size into a new nave were abandoned after the Black Death of 1348 devastated Siena; the unfinished wall of that Nuovo Duomo still stands beside the cathedral as a visible monument to the plan that never happened.Plan the visit
SquarePiazza del CampoIts shell shape, the Palio di Siena horse race, Fonte Gaia, Palazzo Pubblico and the Torre del MangiaPiazza del Campo is the shell shaped square where Siena has staged its civic life since the late 12th century, when the comune fused two market areas into one sloping, fan shaped public space. Nine sections of paving radiate from the Fonte Gaia at the top, said to represent the nine-member government that ruled medieval Siena, the Governo dei Nove. Twice a year, on 2 July and 16 August, the square becomes a dirt racetrack for the Palio di Siena, a 90 second bareback horse race between the city's contrade that draws crowds packed shoulder to shoulder against the buildings. On any ordinary day it works simply as the best place in the city to sit, eat gelato, and watch Palazzo Pubblico's Torre del Mangia change color with the light.
TowerTorre del MangiaIts 87-meter height matching the cathedral tower, the view over Piazza del Campo, its Mangiaguadagni legendTorre del Mangia rises from Palazzo Pubblico on Piazza del Campo as Siena's answer to the towers of rival Tuscan hill towns, deliberately built, according to municipal tradition, to exactly match the height of Siena Cathedral's bell tower so that neither religious nor civic power could claim to stand taller. Payments recorded from 1338 through 1349 document its construction under a team of builders, giving it a slender brick shaft topped by a white stone crown designed in part by Lippo Memmi. Its name supposedly commemorates a lazy first bell ringer nicknamed Mangiaguadagni, or eat-the-profits, whose statue still stands nearby. Four hundred narrow steps lead to the top, and the reward at 87 meters is a view that lays out the whole shell shaped Campo below, along with the greater Sienese countryside stretching toward the hills of the Chianti and Crete Senesi.
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More within reach
Monuments a day trip away, elsewhere in Tuscany.
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