The Siena Cathedral is the city's cathedral, dedicated to Saint Mary of the Assumption: a Romanesque-Gothic church banded in white and black marble, the colors of Siena's coat of arms, on the highest hill of the old town.
Its sculpted...
The Baptistery of San Giovanni is the little church hidden beneath the apse of Siena Cathedral: you reach it from the steps of Piazza San Giovanni, behind the cathedral. Outside it has a white marble facade left half-finished; inside it keeps one...
The Palazzo Pubblico is Siena's town hall: a large Gothic building of stone and brick on the low side of Piazza del Campo, flanked by the slender Torre del Mangia.
It was the seat of the Republic's government and still is the seat of the...
The Torre del Mangia is Siena's civic tower, about 88 meters tall, rising next to the Palazzo Pubblico in Piazza del Campo.
It is built of red brick with a white travertine crown, and from its top you see the square, the terracotta roofs...
The Pinacoteca Nazionale is Siena's main state museum and gathers Sienese painting from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. It is housed in two palaces on Via San Pietro, Buonsignori and Brigidi, and is visited in chronological order, from...
The Santa Maria della Scala is Siena's old hospital, right in front of the cathedral, now a large museum complex that alternates monumental halls, narrow corridors and galleries dug into the tuff. In its underground levels it houses the National...
Siena's Civic Museum occupies the first floor of the Palazzo Pubblico, in Piazza del Campo, where the Republic met to govern.
Here the frescoes the Nine wanted on the walls of the halls have survived, among them Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Good...
Piazza del Campo is Siena's main square, in the heart of the medieval city: a great shell of red brick sloping down toward the Palazzo Pubblico and the Torre del Mangia. It is where the Sienese meet and where, twice a year, the Palio is...
The Fonte Gaia is the monumental fountain of Piazza del Campo in Siena: a rectangular basin of white marble, open toward the Palazzo Pubblico, with reliefs of the Madonna, the Virtues and scenes from Genesis.
It was the city's first great...
The Basilica of San Domenico is the great Gothic brick church of the Dominicans, on the Camporegio hill, and it holds the head of Saint Catherine of Siena.
Austere outside, rich in frescoes inside, it faces the cathedral and the old town,...
The Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana, or Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, stands beside Siena Cathedral and is housed in what was meant to be the right nave of the "Duomo Nuovo", the fourteenth-century project for a gigantic church that was never...
Palazzo Piccolomini-delle Papesse is a Renaissance palace on Via di Città, the main street of central Siena, built in 1460 for a sister of Pope Pius II.
It has a travertine facade in the Florentine manner and a courtyard with carved...
The Sanctuary of Saint Catherine is the house where Saint Catherine of Siena was born, in the Fontebranda district, turned into a sanctuary of porticoes, loggias and oratories. It stands on the Costa di Sant'Antonio, in an area that was once a...
The Oratory of San Bernardino stands in Piazza San Francesco in Siena: a small brick building with two frescoed halls, one above the other.
Next to it, in the adjoining rooms, is the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art: the two are visited...
The Botanical Garden of Siena is the University's garden, on Via Mattioli, near Porta Tufi, inside the walls.
It covers about two and a half hectares of a slope and combines beds of medicinal plants, a small park with exotic trees, a...
Piazza del Duomo is the square on the hill of Santa Maria, in Siena, overlooked by the cathedral's facade, the old Santa Maria della Scala hospital and the Archbishop's Palace.
It is L-shaped and, to the right of the cathedral, continues...
The Medici Fortress, also called Forte di Santa Barbara, is a big brick quadrilateral with four bastions, on the edge of Siena's center between the stadium and the Lizza gardens. Inside: trees, benches and summer concerts.
The fort is the...
The Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art is in the rooms next to the Oratory of San Bernardino, in Piazza San Francesco, and gives you two visits in one. On one side, Sienese painting and sculpture from the 13th to the 18th century; on the other, an...
The Loggia della Mercanzia, also known as the Loggia dei Mercanti or di San Paolo, is an elegant three-arched portico at the back of Piazza del Campo, at the spot called Croce del Travaglio. Via Banchi di Sopra, Via Banchi di Sotto and Via di...
The Logge del Papa ("the Pope's Loggias") are a Renaissance loggia in Siena, at the end of Via Banchi di Sotto, next to the church of San Martino. Three travertine arches, a Latin dedication and a family story: a pope's gift to his...
Fontebranda is Siena's most imposing fountain and the richest in water, in the Terzo di Camollia, in the Vallechiara hollow, a few steps from the gate of the same name. Three big pointed Gothic arches topped with battlements are its calling...
The Cappella di Piazza is a marble tabernacle at the foot of the Torre del Mangia, in Piazza del Campo. It juts out from the Palazzo Pubblico and is the only building that steps out of the line of the palaces around the square: you spot it at...
The church of Sant'Agostino stands on Prato Sant'Agostino and is much richer than its plain facade lets you imagine. Founded by the Augustinians in 1258, it has an 18th-century interior, with a single nave and monumental altars of polychrome...
The Basilica of San Francesco is one of the most important churches in Siena, in Piazza San Francesco. A great Gothic nave, with walls in bands of white and green marble, 14th-century frescoes by the Lorenzetti brothers and a Eucharistic...
The Basilica of San Clemente in Santa Maria dei Servi, simply "i Servi" to the Sienese, stands on top of the hill above Valdimontone, in Piazza Manzoni. It is a Servite church with a facade that was never finished and, inside, a treasure of...
Palazzo Chigi-Saracini is one of the most prestigious noble palaces in Siena, on Via di Città, with a Gothic facade that follows the curve of the street. Inside, music is studied at the highest level and a collection of Sienese art from the 13th...
Palazzo Salimbeni, formerly the Rocca or Castellare Salimbeni, is a historic building in the center of Siena, in Piazza Salimbeni, and since 1866 it has been the head office of the Monte dei Paschi bank. From outside it looks 14th-century, but...
The church of Santo Spirito stands in the square of the same name in Siena, and it is a Renaissance church: brick outside, and inside a single nave with chapels full of works from the 15th to the 17th century.
The exterior is in brick,...
The Palazzo del Magnifico was the residence of Pandolfo Petrucci, lord of Siena. It stands in Piazza San Giovanni, at the corner with Via dei Pellegrini, and it was one of the most sumptuous palaces of its time, even if its treasures are now...
The church of San Pietro alla Magione, on Via Camollia, is a Romanesque stone church, approached by a flight of steps, where the Knights Templar kept a hospice for pilgrims. What remains is a bell gable and crosses carved into the...
The Basilica dell'Osservanza, or Basilica of San Bernardino, stands on the Capriola hill, outside the center of Siena, where Saint Bernardino lived. It is the most important of the churches outside the city: a Renaissance brick building,...
The Church of San Giorgio, on Via di Pantaneto in Siena, carries the name of the city's most famous victory: it is dedicated to the saint the Sienese Ghibellines called upon before attacking the Florentine Guelphs at Montaperti, in...
Mass is no longer said in the Church of Santo Stefano alla Lizza, on the corner of Via dei Gazzani and Piazza della Lizza in Siena: the deconsecrated church has become the concert hall of Italian Opera Siena, a stone's throw from the Lizza...
The Church of San Sebastiano in Vallepiatta looks onto the small Piazzetta della Selva in Siena and is the church of the Contrada della Selva: a small Renaissance building in the shape of a Greek cross, topped by a dome, born from the devotion of...
The Oratory of San Rocco, on Via Vallerozzi in Siena, is the church of the Contrada della Lupa: a plain brick facade, with an oculus, a 17th-century statue of the saint and a travertine portal, which hides walls painted from floor to ceiling...
The Church of San Raimondo al Refugio, on Via di Fieravecchia in Siena, is a small early 17th-century church with a Baroque marble facade: inside, a rare group of canvases by the leading Sienese painters of the time, almost untouched.
The...
The Church of San Pietro alle Scale, on Via San Pietro in Siena, is a 13th-century church remodeled in late Baroque style: a single nave with stucco altars that holds, among other things, a polyptych attributed to Ambrogio Lorenzetti.
The...
The Church of San Gaetano di Thiene, on Via dei Pispini where it meets Via dell'Oliviera in Siena, is the oratory of the Nobile Contrada del Nicchio: a Baroque church that the people of the district built at their own expense, with the contrada's...
The Church of San Martino, on Via del Porrione in Siena, is a church full of surprises: its single Renaissance nave holds canvases by Guido Reni, Guercino and Domenico Beccafumi. In the Middle Ages it was so important that it gave its name to the...
Siena station, on Piazzale Carlo Rosselli below Porta Camollia, is the city's gateway by train and a piece of 1930s architecture: it was designed by the architect Angiolo Mazzoni and opened on November 25, 1935.
The clock tower rises over...