Siena: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
For two hundred years Siena was a republic and the great rival of Florence, and it ran itself from one square. The square is a shell divided into nine segments for the nine merchants who governed from 1287, and the town hall at its foot has the clearest political painting of the Middle Ages on its walls. Two hours, downhill to the Campo and then up again, and the tower must be booked by the slot.
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A short history of Siena
According to legend, Siena was founded by the sons of Remus, brother of Romulus, which is why the she-wolf appears everywhere in the city. In the Middle Ages it was a wealthy republic and a rival of Florence, which it defeated in 1260 at the Battle of Montaperti. In 1472 the Monte dei Paschi bank was founded here, considered the oldest bank in the world still in operation. The plague of 1348 killed a large part of its inhabitants and halted the enlargement of the cathedral. In 1555, after a long siege, it was taken by the armies of Spain and Florence. Twice every summer the Palio horse race between the city's districts is held in the main square.
The ten best sights in Siena
1Piazza del CampoA sloping shell of brick in nine sections; sit on it, everyone does
2Torre del MangiaAbout four hundred steps; entry by timed slot, buy early
3Palazzo PubblicoThe frescoes of Good and Bad Government, painted in 1338
4Fonte GaiaThe fountain at the top of the Campo, fed by tunnels from miles away
5Siena CathedralStriped marble, and the floor is uncovered only from late August to October
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6Piccolomini Library
A room of Pinturicchio frescoes inside the cathedral; the colours are original
7FacciatoneThe wall of a cathedral the plague stopped; climb it for the view
8Santa Maria della ScalaA hospital for a thousand years, opposite the cathedral, now a museum
9BaptisteryUnder the cathedral’s apse, with a font by Donatello and Ghiberti
10San DomenicoA brick barn of a church that keeps the head of St Catherine
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Siena →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Siena:
Free walking tours in Siena
A republic that painted its own rules
For two hundred years Siena was a republic and the great rival of Florence, and it ran itself from one square. The square is a shell divided into nine segments for the nine merchants who governed from 1287, and the town hall at its foot has the clearest political painting of the Middle Ages on its walls. Two hours, downhill to the Campo and then up again, and the tower must be booked by the slot.
- Piazza del Campo · Nine strips of white stone divide the brick into nine segments, one for each member of the Council of Nine that governed the republic from 1287 to 1355. Twice a year, on the second of July and the sixteenth of August, the square is covered in earth and ten horses race three laps around it bareback in about ninety seconds — the Palio, and a horse can win without its rider.
- Palazzo Pubblico · In the room where the Nine met, Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted in 1338 and 1339 what good government and bad government do to a city and to the countryside: on one wall people dance, build and trade in safety; on the other a tyrant rules over ruins and soldiers. The Nine looked at it every time they sat down.
- Torre del Mangia · The tower was built to rise exactly as high as the cathedral on the hill, so that town and church would stand level. It is named after its first bell-ringer, nicknamed Mangiaguadagni — the one who eats his earnings. About four hundred steps up a narrow stair, and the whole of the shell-shaped square opens below.
- Fonte Gaia · Siena stands on a ridge with no river, and its water came through the bottini — some twenty-five kilometres of tunnels dug through the hill from the thirteenth century to collect seepage. When the water first reached the Campo in 1343 the town was so happy that it named the fountain Gaia, the joyful one.
- Synagogue of Siena · Behind the Campo is the old ghetto, closed in 1571, and its synagogue of 1786 is still used by a small community. On the twenty-eighth of June 1799 a mob of the Viva Maria uprising stormed the ghetto and burned thirteen Jews in the Campo itself. The community still remembers them.
- Piazza Salimbeni · The palaces around this square are the headquarters of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena, founded in 1472 as a public pawn bank — the oldest bank in the world still operating. For centuries it was the town’s fortune; in the last decade it needed a rescue by the state.
The cathedral that was too big
In 1339 Siena decided its cathedral was not big enough to answer Florence, and began a new one so large that the existing church would become merely its transept. Nine years later the Black Death killed perhaps half the town, and the work stopped for good. This route goes through what was built, what was abandoned, and the hospital opposite that ran for a thousand years. Half a day; buy the combined ticket.
- Siena Cathedral · Black and white stripes inside and out — the colours of the town’s coat of arms. The floor is fifty-six marble panels inlaid over two centuries, and to protect it most of it is covered for the year and uncovered only from late August to October. The pulpit was carved by Nicola Pisano and his workshop in the 1260s.
- Piccolomini Library · A room built off the nave to hold the books of Pope Pius II, a Sienese, and painted by Pinturicchio around 1505 with ten scenes of his life. The room was kept closed for most of its history, and the colours are still startlingly bright.
- Facciatone · The giant wall standing alone beside the cathedral is the façade of the new nave that was never built. After the plague of 1348 there was neither money nor men to finish it. You can climb to the top of it from the cathedral museum, and from there the whole town lies below.
- Baptistery · Because the hill slopes away, the cathedral’s apse stands on a substructure, and the baptistery is underneath it, entered from a lower square. The bronze panels of its font were made by the best sculptors of the day, among them Ghiberti and Donatello.
- Santa Maria della Scala · One of the oldest hospitals in Europe, working opposite the cathedral from around the eleventh century until the 1990s. It took in pilgrims on the road to Rome, abandoned children and the sick, and in the ward called the Pilgrims’ Hall the walls were painted in the 1440s with scenes of exactly that work.
- San Domenico · Catherine of Siena, the dyer’s daughter who told a pope to return from Avignon to Rome — and he did — prayed in this church. Her head is kept here in a reliquary; the rest of her body is in Rome. The terrace beside the church looks back across the valley at the cathedral.
The towns on the hills
South of Siena the Val d’Orcia is the Tuscany of the postcards — bare rolling hills, lines of cypresses, a farmhouse on every rise — and the towns on it each specialise in something: a pope’s ideal town, a red wine, a village with a hot pool for a square. A full day and a car, and the roads are narrow and beautiful.
- Monte Oliveto Maggiore · A brick abbey founded in 1313 in the eroded clay hills called the Crete Senesi. Its great cloister is painted with thirty-six scenes from the life of St Benedict by Luca Signorelli and Sodoma, and Sodoma painted himself into one of them with his pet badgers at his feet.
- Montalcino · When Florence finally took Siena in 1555, the last Sienese held out here for four more years as the Republic of Siena in Montalcino. Today the town is the home of Brunello, one of Italy’s great red wines, and the fortress where the republic made its last stand has a wine bar in it.
- Sant’Antimo · A Romanesque abbey of pale stone alone in a valley of olive trees below Montalcino. The tradition says Charlemagne founded it; the church you see is of the twelfth century, and a small community of monks still sings the offices in Gregorian chant.
- Bagno Vignoni · The square of this village is not paved — it is a long stone pool of hot spring water, which the Romans used and which Lorenzo de’ Medici came to for his health. You cannot bathe in the square any more, but the water runs on down the hill into free pools below the village.
- Pienza · Pope Pius II was born in this village when it was called Corsignano, and in 1459 he had it rebuilt as an ideal Renaissance town, with a cathedral, a palace and a town hall around one square, in about four years. He renamed it after himself. Every shop now sells the local pecorino cheese.
- Montepulciano · A town strung along a ridge with one long main street climbing to the top, and under the palaces the cellars of the Vino Nobile go deep into the rock. Several are open, and you walk down into them from the street.
Getting to Siena and getting around
- Siena Station · Below the town; escalators climb to the gate. From Florence the bus is faster
- Piazza Gramsci · The bus terminus for Florence and the hill towns, at the edge of the old town
Cheap eats in Siena
Siena’s counter food is sweet and medieval. Panforte is a dense cake of honey, nuts, candied fruit and spices that the town has made since the Middle Ages, sold by the slice; ricciarelli are soft almond biscuits shaped like eyes. The savoury things are a schiacciata, the flat Tuscan bread, split and filled with finocchiona, the fennel salami, a few euro, and the pasta of the town is pici, thick and hand-rolled.
- Pasticceria Nannini · Panforte by the slice and ricciarelli at the bar
- Piazza del Campo · A schiacciata from the lanes behind the square, eaten sitting on the brick
- Piazza Salimbeni · Wine bars by the glass along Banchi di Sopra
- Pienza · Pecorino at every stage of age, tasted before you buy
- Montalcino · Brunello by the glass in the fortress
- Montepulciano · Cellar tastings straight off the main street
- Castello di Brolio · Chianti at the castle where its recipe was written
Museums in Siena
Siena’s painters worked on gold, with long faces and flowing line, and they kept doing it after Florence had moved on to perspective. The best of them are in the town hall, the cathedral museum and the Pinacoteca, and the last is usually almost empty.
- Palazzo Pubblico · Good and Bad Government, and Simone Martini’s Maestà
- Facciatone · Duccio’s Maestà, then the climb to the top of the wall
- Pinacoteca Nazionale · Two centuries of gold-ground painting, almost empty
- Santa Maria della Scala · The painted hospital ward and the archaeological museum below
- Piccolomini Library · Pinturicchio’s frescoes of a Sienese pope
- Volterra · An Etruscan museum and the alabaster workshops
Nature and day trips near Siena
Around Siena are two different landscapes. To the south-east the Crete Senesi are bare clay hills, grey in winter and gold in summer, almost treeless; further south the Val d’Orcia adds cypresses and farmhouses. To the north, Chianti is woods and vineyards.
- The Cypresses of the Val d’Orcia · The ring of cypresses; best at first light
- Asciano · The clay hills of the Crete Senesi around the town
- Bagno Vignoni · Free hot pools below the village
- Orto de’ Pecci · A green valley and farm inside the town walls
- Radda in Chianti · Woods and vineyards in the hills of Chianti
- Fortezza Medicea · A walk on the bastions under the trees
Things to do in Siena with kids
A horse race in a town square, a tower with four hundred steps, a sword stuck in a stone and a village with a hot pool for a square: Siena has easy stories for children. Each contrada has its own animal and its own fountain, and finding them is a game.
- Montesiepi · A real sword in a stone, under glass
- Torre del Mangia · Four hundred steps for older children
- Orto de’ Pecci · Geese and goats in a farm inside the walls
- Monteriggioni · Walk on the walls of a toy-sized castle town
- Bagno Vignoni · Paddle in the warm water below the village
- Piazza del Campo · Roll down the sloping brick; everyone sits there
Holy places in Siena
Siena dedicated itself to the Virgin before a battle in 1260 and won it, and it has called itself the city of the Virgin since. Its saint is Catherine, a dyer’s daughter who argued with popes. And behind the Campo is the synagogue of a community that has lived here since the Middle Ages.
- Synagogue of Siena · Still in use; visits by appointment
- Siena Cathedral · The striped cathedral and its inlaid floor
- San Domenico · The head of St Catherine in a reliquary
- House of St Catherine · The family house and her father’s dye works
- San Galgano · The roofless abbey and the sword in the stone above it
- Sant’Antimo · Monks singing Gregorian chant in a Romanesque abbey
Nightlife in Siena
Siena is a university town and the evening is out of doors: the Campo fills after dark with people sitting on the brick with a drink, and the contrade hold their own dinners in the streets before the Palio. It is a town of wine bars rather than clubs.
- Piazza del Campo · Sitting on the brick after dark; the whole town
- Piazza Salimbeni · Wine bars along the main street
- Fontebranda · The contrada streets and their summer dinners
- Fortezza Medicea · Summer events on the bastions
- San Domenico · The terrace view of the lit cathedral
Frequently asked questions about Siena
What is there to see in Siena?
The top sights in Siena are Piazza del Campo, Torre del Mangia and Palazzo Pubblico. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Siena?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Siena without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Siena?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Siena, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: A republic that painted its own rules.
How do you get to Siena and get around?
The main ways are Siena Station and Piazza Gramsci. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Siena, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Siena that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Siena for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.