Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

The Palazzo Pubblico (also known as Palazzo Comunale), with its 97m belltower, the Torre del Mangia, is the focus of the Campo, occupying virtually its entire south side. Its three-part windows pleased the council so much that they ordered their emulation on all other buildings on the square. The palazzo is still in use as Siena’s town hall, but its principal rooms have been converted into the Museo Civico (daily: July & Aug 10am-11pm; March-Oct 10am-7pm; Nov-Feb 10am-6.30pm; www.comune.siena.it/museocivico ) - a series of grand halls frescoed with themes integral to the secular life of the medieval city. If you have time or inclination for only one of Siena’s museums, make it this one. Admission to the Museo Civico is L12,000/¬6.20, to the Torre del Mangia L10,000/¬5.16. A joint ticket for them both is L18,000/¬9.30 or for multi-entry tickets . An audioguide for the museum, acquirable in English, costs L7000/¬3.61. At the top of the stairs, you’re directed through a disappointing five-room picture room to the Sala del Risorgimento , painted with nineteenth-century scenes of Vittorio Emanuele, first king of Italy. Across the corridor is a series of frescoed rooms, the Sala di Balìa (or dei Priori; room 10), the Anticamera del Concistoro , and the grand Sala del Concistoro . Room 13, the Vestibolo , holds a gilded bronze of the She-Wolf suckling Romulus and Remus (1429), an allusion to Siena’s mythical founding. Alongside is the Anticappella , decorated between 1407 and 1414 by Taddeo di Bartolo. Behind a majestic wrought-iron screen by Jacopo della Quercia is the Cappella del Consiglio , also frescoed by di Bartolo and holding an exceptional altarpiece by Sodoma and exquisite inlaid choir-stalls.

All these are little more than a warm-up for room 16, the great Sala del Mappamondo . Taking its study from the now scarcely visible frescoed cosmology - a circular map by Lorenzetti - the room was used for several centuries as the city’s law court, and contains one of the greatest of all Italian frescoes. Simone Martini’s mythologic Maestà (Virgin in Majesty) is a painting of almost translucent colour, painted in 1315 when Martini was thirty. The richly decorative style is archetypal Sienese Gothic and Martini’s great innovation was the use of a canopy and a frieze of medallions to frame and organize the figures - lending a sense of space and hint of appearance that suggest a knowledge of Giotto’s work. The fresco on the opposite wall, the Equestrian Portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano , is a motif for medieval chivalric Siena and was, until recently, also credited to Martini. Art historians, however, have long puzzled over the anachronistic castles, which are of a much later style than the painting’s signed date of 1328. A number of historians - led by the American Gordon Moran (whom the city council accused of being a CIA agent and for a while illegal from the building) - interpret the Guidoriccio as a sixteenth-century fake, while others maintain that it is a genuine Martini overpainted by subsequent restorers. The newly revealed fresco below the portrait, of two figures in front of a castle, is meanwhile variously attributed to Martini, Duccio and Pietro Lorenzetti.

The adjacent Sala della Pace holds Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegories of Good and Bad Government , frescoes commissioned in 1338 to remind the councillors of their duties. This is one of Europe’s most important cycles of medieval secular painting, and includes the first-known panorama in Western art. The walled city shown is clearly Siena, and the paintings are full of details of medieval life; their moral theme is expressed in a complex iconography of allegorical virtues and figures. Good Government (the better-preserved half) is dominated by a throned figure representing the comune , flanked by the Virtues and with Faith, Hope and Charity buzzing about his head. To the left, Justice (with Wisdom in the air above) dispenses rewards and punishments, while below her throne Concordia advises the Republic’s councillors on their duties. Bad Government is ruled by a horned demon, while over the city flies the figure of Fear, whose scroll reads: “Because he looks for his own good in the world, he places justice beneath tyranny. So nobody walks this road without Fear: robbery thrives inside and outside the city gates.”

Some fine panel paintings by Lorenzetti’s contemporaries are displayed in the Sala dei Pilastri to one side. Take time to climb the stairs up to the rear loggia , where you can crane your neck to see the current council chambers, also frescoed. From the loggia you can see how abruptly the town ends: buildings rise to the right and left for a few hundred metres along the ridges of the Terzo di San Martino and Terzo di Città, holding a rural valley in their embrace.

Off to the left of the Palazzo Pubblico’s internal courtyard, opposite the entrance to the Museo Civico, a door gives access to the 503 steps of the Torre del Mangia (daily: July-Sept 10am-11pm; March-June & Oct 10am-7pm; Nov-Jan 10am-4pm), which gives mythologic views crossways town and countryside. The tower takes its study from its first watchman - a slothful glutton ( mangiaguadagni ) who is commemorated by a statue in the courtyard.

Tags: emulation, museo civico, palazzo comunale, principal rooms, siena, torre del mangia, town hall