Forget tourist-clogged Florence – this is Tuscany’s best city by a mile

The Piazza del Campo, Siena’s main square, is surely the most theatrical public space in the whole of Tuscany.

Shaped like a giant scallop shell, it forms a sort of amphitheatre where the main roads which once led into the city met on a gentle slope near the top of this ancient hill town. The cobbled arena slopes gently down to the most impressive of the buildings which surround the piazza – the civic hall, a crenellated red-brick medieval palace with a stepped façade, a lower storey encrusted in white marble and rows of gothic windows trimmed with the same stone.

Sprouting from one side is the great, top-heavy tower – the tallest in Italy when it was finished in 1348. It is this remarkable building that I have come to see.

The clue to its historic significance is in its official name – the Palazzo Pubblico. It wasn’t built by a domineering seigniorial family like the Medici or by domineering dukes like those of Mantua or Milan.

This was a public – or perhaps better – a people’s palace, the home of a unique system of government which was developed after Siena became a republic in 1280. A ruling council of nine men – the Nove – was established and its members were elected on rotation.

It was hardly what we would think of as a democracy – these men were chosen from an elite of only 500 out of a population of about 80,000. But the Nove provided a common vision and the stability needed for Siena to develop an international banking and trading empire which brought with it enormous wealth, as well as a fierce rivalry with its Tuscan neighbour, Florence.

Florence usually triumphed in military encounters, but by the middle of the 14th century, Siena was one of the most progressive, powerful and richest city states in the world.

And the way that Siena best liked to demonstrate its status was through art and architecture. The lavish building projects underway in the first half of the 14th century were unparalleled in Europe – and even its great rival Florence had to bow to the artists who flourished here.

Duccio, Simone Martin, and the Lorenzetti brothers, Pietro and Ambrogio, were among the most celebrated painters of their time.

As a new exhibition of medieval Sienese art which opens at the National Gallery today demonstrates, it was a city in love with colour and extravagance.

But while you can enjoy some of its most stunning artistic treasures in the London exhibition, the greatest of all can only be seen in Siena itself. Most appealing, in my view, is the series of frescoes on the walls of one of the state rooms where the Nove met in the Palazzo Pubblico.

Made by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and his workshop in 1338-1339, they illustrate and contrast the consequences of good and bad government.

The National Gallery curators describe them as “one of the most exceptional visualisations of the mechanisms of government and its moral purpose ever made.” For the casual viewer, they are also a highly engaging insight into Siena when it was at the peak of its glory, 700 years ago.

The 46ft-long mural of the Well-Governed City depicts the Siena as a jumble of towers and buildings – you can spot the green and white marble stripes of the cathedral in the distance, while the foreground is full of vignettes of everyday life. There is a wedding party, a teacher lecturing in a school room, men playing a board game, huntsmen heading for the forest and reapers working in the fields beyond.

By contrast on the wall opposite, the Badly Governed City depicts a society dominated by a tyrant. The figure of Justice lies captive and bound, tormented by Cruelty and Deceit, Fury and War. Unlike the Well-Governed City, the streets are half-empty, the houses are beginning to fall into ruin, and only the armourer does a good trade. In the centre in the foreground, a man lies dead on the street. The warning to the Nove about their responsibilities could hardly be clearer.

Every time I have seen it, however, I’m struck by the terrible irony inherent in this scene; an unintended prediction of what was going to happen here just ten years later, not because of the failings of the Nove, but because of Europe’s worst ever pandemic.

Only weeks after the Palazzo Pubblico was finally completed in 1348 and the last of the wooden scaffolding was removed from the tower, Siena was laid waste.

Nearly 700 years after the event, few eye-witness descriptions of the horrific impact of the Black Death in Europe have survived. But an account by Agnolo di Tura, a shoemaker from Siena, is one of the most powerful. Agnolo survived and chronicled a plague which killed, in just a few weeks, more than half the population, including all five of his own children.

His description includes eery echoes of Lorenzetti’s fresco. “And the city of Siena seemed deserted… No bells tolled and there was no one who wept for any death, for all awaited death… So many died that all believed that it was the end of the world. Those that survived were like persons distraught and almost without feeling.”

And in many ways, it was the end of a world. Siena’s golden age was stopped suddenly in its tracks. The Palazzo Pubblico may have been finished, but the spectacular project to transform Siena’s great cathedral into the largest church in Christendom was abandoned. You can still see the roofless walls of what would have been an enormous nave built at right angles to the original building. The empty frame stands as a monument to the moment that Siena’s world stopped turning.

Of course, like all European cities, it found a way to survive and, eventually, to prosper again. But the days when it outshone Florence were over. Though, maybe not… Today, while Florence often feels choked with tourists, Siena remains relatively free of disruption – especially in the evenings when the day trippers have left.

Not only is it much quieter, but it is much more compact than its ancient rival, and the views out over the Tuscan countryside are even more spectacular.

For a peaceful cultural break where you can enjoy some of the most beautiful art ever made, there is only one winner.

The wonders of medieval Siena

Siena’s network of narrow cobbled streets and many of its red-brick houses, churches and palaces are medieval in origin. But its artistic treasures are hidden away in museums. Here are some of the best.

The Duomo

Work on the Duomo began in 1226, when Siena was enjoying a surge in prosperity and it was largely completed by 1311, when one of the most important paintings ever made was installed above the high altar – Duccio’s shimmering Maesta (Virgin in Majesty).

Now in the Opera del Duomo museum next door, it was, at the time, the most expensive panel painting ever made in Europe and is also the earliest surviving double-sided altarpiece. So proud was the city of its new masterpiece, that the work was paraded through the streets before its installation behind the altar.

The important relic of Medieval Sienese Art still in the Duomo itself is Pisano’ pulpit, carved out of Carrara marble between 1265 and 1268 and embellished with seven scenes from the Life of Christ.

Some of the greatest painters and sculptors of the 15th- and 16th-centuries were also enticed to Siena and the Duomo is home to works by Donatello and the young Michelangelo as well as frescos by Pinturicchio and Raphael in the Piccolomini Library. Down in the Baptistry, the sculpted bronze panels around the font are by Jacopo della Quercia and also Donatello and Ghiberti, who came from Florence to work on it.

The Palazzo Pubblico

As well as the wonderful 14th-century frescoes by Lorenzetti (see above) the Palazzo has a spectacular art collection, including a splendid frescoed Maesta – the first known work by Simone Martini, who was almost certainly trained by Duccio.

The Pinacoteca Nazionale

This wonderfully quiet and under-visited museum, in the 15th-century former Palazzo Buonsignori is a pleasure to explore compared with the heaving galleries of the Uffizi in Florence. Among the highlights are works by Duccio and Martini and what may be Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s last work, a wonderfully tender Annunciation which, ironically, was commissioned by the city tax collector and once hung in the Palazzo Pubblico.

The Palio

In its current form, the historic Palio, when horses representing ten of the city’s seventeen contrade (districts) race around the Piazza del Campo, dates back to 1644. But its origins were medieval. It’s still a splendid sight. Turn up early enough and you can enjoy it for free from the central compound. The two races take place on July 2 and August 16.

How to do it

Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350 is at the National Gallery from March 8 -June 22 (admission £20). Nick Trend was a guest of the the Grand Hotel Continental in Siena which is housed in a 17th-century palazzo and is Siena’s only five-star hotel. Doubles from about £280 per night (room only).