SIENA  

Siena is a typical Italian city with buildings made of brick interrupted by steep, twisting stone alleys. Tourists who visit the town will be interested in the dozens of Gothic palaces and pastry shops, and altarpieces of unsurpassed beauty. It was hit by Bubonic plague in the fourteenth century, and since then had to repeatedly defend its freedom from attacks by its neighbours, notably the city of Florence, and thus had little time to develop as a city. It has thus remained one of the largest Tuscan cities to retain a distinctively medieval air, and offers the tourist his best chance of experiencing the enchantment and atmosphere of the Tuscan Middle Ages. But for the tourist who knows the history of the town, a visit to the city would be more to relive its past , than for any of its present attractions. 

Siena is proud of its past, and a sign of this pride is the she-wolf that is its emblem. It was founded as a Roman colony by Augustus about 2,000 years ago. Though the  Sienese do not agree with this and insist on the myth that the town was founded by the sons of Remus, younger brother of Rome's legendary forefather. Siena consists of 17 contrade (neighborhood wards) that were formed in the fourteenth century, and It offers an image of Tuscany different from that of Florence, a permanent rival. Siena is as enigmatic in its culture, correct in its art, and festive in its attitude to life, just as Florence is straightforward, specific, and somber on all counts. Where Florence produced uncompromising mystics like Savonarola, Siena gave the world saintly scholars like St. Catherine (1347-80) and St. Bernardino (1380-1444).

In its commercial enterprises also it competes with Florence and Its bankers, textile magnates, and wool traders put twelfth century Siena in direct competition with Florence, and the two cities kept warring for more than 400 years. While Florence went Guelf, Siena turned Ghibelline and defeated 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. Siena now became Guelf, and in 1270 the Sienese merchants established the Council of Nine, an oligarchy that ruled over Siena's best republican era, when municipal projects, the middle-class wealth, palace building, and artistic expertise reached their greatest heights. Artists like Duccio, Simone Martini, and the Lorenzetti brothers invented a characteristic Sienese art style, a vastly developed Gothicism that was an outstandingly imaginative foil to the emerging Florentine Renaissance.

In 1348, just as the city was really beginning to flourish, bubonic plague struck, killing off seventy five per cent of the population, destroying the social fabric, and demoralizing the economy. The Council of Nine carried bravely on, but to make matters worse Charles IV kept attacking Siena during the years 1355 to 1369, and though Siena again routed Florence in 1526, the Spanish took control in 1530 and later handed Siena over to Ducal Florence.

In order to suppress the Sienese once and for all, Cosimo I sent the vicious marquis of Marignano and this worthy besieged the city for eighteen months. He destroyed its fields, burnt its buildings and created so much havoc that by the time he stormed the city in 1555, the marquis had done more damage than even the Black Death. Due to his ministrations only 8,000 out of a population of 40,000 had survived.  The devastated city and countryside looked exactly like the “Effects of Bad Government”  part of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco in Siena's Palazzo Pubblico. Even with all this about 2,000 intensely independent Sienese escaped to Montalcino, where they kept the Sienese Republic alive, in name at least, for another four years. But this only postponed the inevitable and Montalcino also was engulfed by Florence. Siena became, on paper and in fact, merely another part of Grand Ducal Tuscany.