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70km (43 miles) S of Florence; 232km (144 miles) N of Rome
Siena is a medieval city of brick. From a vantage point such as the
Palazzo Pubblico's tower, its sea of roof tiles blends into a landscape
of steep, twisting stone alleys. This cityscape hides dozens of Gothic
palaces and pastry shops galore, unseen neighborhood rivalries, and
altarpieces of unsurpassed beauty.
Siena is proud of its past. It trumpets the she-wolf as its emblem, a
holdover from its days as Saena Julia, the Roman colony founded by
Augustus about 2,000 years ago (though the official Sienese myth has the
town founded by the sons of Remus, younger brother of Rome's legendary
forefather). Siena still parcels out the rhythms of life, its rites of
passage and communal responsibilities, to the 17 contrade (neighborhood
wards) formed in the 14th century. It makes a point of offering an image
of Tuscany different from that of Florence, its old medieval rival:
Siena is as inscrutable in its culture, decorous in its art, and festive
in its life attitude as Florence is forthright, precise, and serious on
all counts. Where Florence produced hard-nosed mystics such as
Savonarola, Siena gave forth saintly scholars like St. Catherine
(1347-80) and St. Bernardino (1380-1444).
Its bankers, textile magnates, and wool traders put 12th-century Siena
in direct competition with Florence, and the two cities kept at each
other's throats for more than 400 years. When Florence went Guelf, Siena
turned Ghibelline and soundly thrashed Florence at the 1260 Battle of
Montaperti. Unfortunately for Siena, the battle was fought in alliance
with ousted Florentine Ghibellines, who refused to allow the armies to
press the advantage and level Florence. Within 10 years, Charles of
Anjou had crushed the Sienese Ghibellines.
With Siena now Guelf again, Sienese merchants established in 1270 the
Council of Nine, an oligarchy that ruled over Siena's greatest
republican era, when civic projects, the middle-class economy, palace
building, and artistic prowess reached their greatest heights. Artists
like Duccio, Simone Martini, and the Lorenzetti brothers invented a
distinctive Sienese art style, a highly developed Gothicism that was an
excellent artistic foil to the emerging Florentine Renaissance.
Then, in 1348, the Black Death hit the city, killing more than
three-quarters of the population, decimating the social fabric, and
devastating the economy. The Council of Nine soldiered on, but Charles
IV attacked Siena from 1355 to 1369, and though Siena again trounced
Florence in 1526, the Spanish took control in 1530 and later handed
Siena over to Ducal Florence.
To subdue these pesky Sienese once and for all, Cosimo I sent the brutal
marquis of Marignano, who besieged the city for a year and a half,
destroying its fields and burning its buildings. By the time he stormed
the city in 1555, the marquis had done more damage than even the Black
Death -- only 8,000 out of a population of 40,000 had survived -- and
the burned and broken city and countryside bore an uncanny resemblance
to the Effects of Bad Government, half of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco
in Siena's Palazzo Pubblico. Some 2,000 fiercely independent Sienese
escaped to Montalcino, where they kept the Sienese Republic alive, in
name at least, for another 4 years. Then Montalcino, too, was engulfed
by Florence. Siena became, on paper and in fact, merely another part of
Grand Ducal Tuscany. Since the plague of the 14th century, Siena was so
busy defending its liberty it had little time or energy to develop as a
city. As a result, it has remained one of the largest Tuscan cities to
retain a distinctively medieval air and offers your best chance in Italy
to slip into the rhythms and atmosphere of the Tuscan Middle Ages. |
