Palazzo Pubblico e Museo Civico ★★★

The Allegory of Good and Bad Government and its Effects on the Town and Countryside (detail), fresco by the Lorenzetti Brothers.

The medeival town hall of Siena contains some of the greatest secular art in Italy

Anchoring the base of the Campo is the crenellated 13th century town hall, the Palazzo Pubblico/Museo Civico is well worth the admission to admire its public spaces frescoed with Sienese Gothic masterpieces.

The star of the show is the Salla della Pace, the former meeting chamber for the old ruling Council of Nine, decorated with the amazing ★★★ Allegory of Good and Bad Government and its Effects on the Town And Countryside by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (detail pictured above).

This cycle of frescoes is packed with scenes of 14th century daily life and is counted as perhaps the most important secular painting from medieval Europe. Its goal is to remind the Council of Nine of the effects their government will have.

Either they will enjoy a prosperous Siena, where men busily raise new buildings (proof that scaffolding rises eternal in Italy), shop keeps sell their wares, teachers instruct their students, noble ladies dance in the streets, and peasants happily toil away in the surrounding fields passed by gentlemen returning on horseback from falcon hunting.

Bad government will result in a blasted and destroyed city, passersby being crushed by crumbling buildings, the once-lush countryside ravished by famine and fire. (Perhaps fittingly, the frescoes forming this "bad government" side of the story are faded, cracked, and withered by age and mold.)

In the large room preceeding this masterpiece, the Sala del Mappamondo, are some more amazing frescoes, including Simone Martini's courtly early Maestà (Madonna in Majesty) and a portrait of the knight and early 14th century Captain of the Sienese army Guidoriccio da Foligno riding along in a richly patterned cloak—a mark of Sienese Gothic art—en route to capture Montemassi.

Guidoriccio di Foligno, by Simone Martini (1315–21).

Beneath the Guidoriccio is an earlier fresco—perhaps by Duccio, Pietro Lorenzetti, or Memmo di Filippuccio—showing Sienese officials being handed the proverbial keys to yet another conquest. This 1315/20 fresco is deeply scarred by the grooves of what may have been a round piece that could be rotated as part of a later work, since removed, showing the map of the world the room was named after.

This is in turn, flanked by two saints in niches by Renaissance great Il Sodoma: San Vittorio and San Ansanus.

Torre del Mangia

Torre del Mangia. (Photo by Jastrow)You can climb the 102-meter (335-foot-tall) "Hunger Tower" for some fine city views (seperate admission).

You'd think there was some great, possibly fairy tale-dark reason for the tower's name, but in fact "mangiaguadagni" (earnings-eater) was the nickname of its 14th cetnury architect, Giovanni di Balduccio.

The brick tower is capped by a classic, crenellated white tarvertine crown designed by Lippo Memmi and Agostino di Giovanni.

The tower is open daily 10am to 7pm (4pm from mid-Oct through Feb). tel. +39-0577-292-226.

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