Description
Palazzo Tolomei is the medieval palace that closes off the square of the same name, along Banchi di Sopra, one of Siena's main streets. It was the home of a family of bankers and is the oldest surviving private residence in the city.
What you really come to see is the grey stone facade: stern, typically thirteenth-century, with two widely spaced floors divided by stringcourses. It is its restraint that strikes you: no needless decoration, just a solid wall almost eight hundred years old.
What softens it are the mullioned windows: two rows of five, topped by pointed little arches and small trefoil oculi. Look at them from the square, a little way up: the regular rhythm of the openings is what lightens the whole facade.
Inside, in the great hall, architectural fragments found during restoration have been put back together, a chance to see up close pieces of a palace that came close to disappearing.
The Tolomei were among the first in Siena to make their fortune in money changing: powerful bankers, with towers and castles between the Montagnola Senese and the Maremma. Already in the 11th and 12th centuries they owned a castellare outside the walls of the time, a sign of wealth that was by then well established.
The palace was begun before 1205. It barely survived, though: after 1267 the Ghibellines almost completely destroyed it, and only the upper floors were rebuilt, between 1270 and 1275. In 1277 it caught fire, but without serious damage.
The family had its share of enemies: in 1269 it was Regolino Tolomei who killed Provenzano Salvani, the leader of the Sienese Ghibellines, in battle.
In Dante's Purgatory there is also Pia, a woman from Siena killed by her husband in the Maremma, who asks to be remembered. Early commentators said she was a Tolomei, although no document has ever proved it, and the verse is carved on a plaque right on this palace.
Pia's plaque is on the right side, in Vicolo della Torre: a detail many people walk past without seeing.
What you see today is largely the result of the 1971 restoration.
What you really come to see is the grey stone facade: stern, typically thirteenth-century, with two widely spaced floors divided by stringcourses. It is its restraint that strikes you: no needless decoration, just a solid wall almost eight hundred years old.
What softens it are the mullioned windows: two rows of five, topped by pointed little arches and small trefoil oculi. Look at them from the square, a little way up: the regular rhythm of the openings is what lightens the whole facade.
Inside, in the great hall, architectural fragments found during restoration have been put back together, a chance to see up close pieces of a palace that came close to disappearing.
The Tolomei were among the first in Siena to make their fortune in money changing: powerful bankers, with towers and castles between the Montagnola Senese and the Maremma. Already in the 11th and 12th centuries they owned a castellare outside the walls of the time, a sign of wealth that was by then well established.
The palace was begun before 1205. It barely survived, though: after 1267 the Ghibellines almost completely destroyed it, and only the upper floors were rebuilt, between 1270 and 1275. In 1277 it caught fire, but without serious damage.
The family had its share of enemies: in 1269 it was Regolino Tolomei who killed Provenzano Salvani, the leader of the Sienese Ghibellines, in battle.
In Dante's Purgatory there is also Pia, a woman from Siena killed by her husband in the Maremma, who asks to be remembered. Early commentators said she was a Tolomei, although no document has ever proved it, and the verse is carved on a plaque right on this palace.
Pia's plaque is on the right side, in Vicolo della Torre: a detail many people walk past without seeing.
What you see today is largely the result of the 1971 restoration.