Italy Guide
Tuscany
The Museo Civico
Opening time: daily: mid-March to Oct 10am–7pm; Nov & Feb to mid-March 10am–6pm; Dec & Jan 10am–5.30pm
Price: €7.50
Address: Palazzo Pubblico
The Museo Civico is a series of grand halls frescoed with themes integral to the secular life of the medieval city. If you have time or inclination for only one of Siena's museums, make it this one.
The main attraction is the great Sala del Mappamondo. Taking its name from the now scarcely visible frescoed cosmology – a circular map by Lorenzetti – the room was used for several centuries as the city's law court, and contains one of the greatest of all Italian frescoes: Simone Martini's fabulous Maestà (Virgin in Majesty). Painted in 1315 when Martini was 30, it's a painting of almost translucent colour. Martini's great innovation was the use of a canopy and a frieze of medallions to frame and organize the figures – lending a sense of space and hint of perspective that suggest a knowledge of Giotto's work. The adjacent Sala della Pace holds Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegories of Good and Bad Government, frescoes commissioned in 1338 to remind the councillors of their duties. This is one of Europe's most important cycles of medieval secular painting, and includes the first-known panorama in Western art.
Some fine panel paintings by Lorenzetti's contemporaries are displayed in the Sala dei Pilastri to one side. Take time to climb the stairs up to the rear loggia, where you can crane your neck to see the current council chambers, also frescoed. From the loggia you can see how abruptly the town ends: buildings rise to the right and left for a few hundred metres along the ridges of the Terzo di San Martino and Terzo di Città, holding a rural valley in their embrace.