Siena Civic Museum Tickets and Good Government Frescoes

With Siena Civic Museum tickets in hand you go straight into Palazzo Pubblico, the Gothic town hall on Piazza del Campo, and spend about two hours among the masterpieces of the Sienese school of painting.

The rooms were once the seat of the Republic's government, and each one has its own story. In the Sala del Mappamondo, where the council of the Republic met, named for a big wooden rotating map by Ambrogio Lorenzetti that has not survived, the far wall holds the Maestà by Simone Martini, dated 1312 to 1315, with its enthroned Madonna and child in soft colours and clean lines. The same hand painted the mercenary captain Guidoriccio da Fogliano in 1328.

• Sala dei Nove, home to Lorenzetti's frescoes, commissioned in 1337, a political statement contrasting two ways to rule and their effects on the city
• Anticappella, with Taddeo di Bartolo's cycle of virtues and illustrious men, commissioned in 1415
• Sala del Concistoro, reached through a passage with a marble doorway by Bernardo Rossellino and a ceiling painted by Domenico Beccafumi

Near the end, the big loggia upstairs opens a view over the southern part of Siena. The skip-the-line tickets are the only thing included, and the museum is explored at your own pace, without a guide.