Piazza del Campo

Piazza del Campo is Siena's central public square and one of the finest medieval piazzas in Europe, a shell-shaped open space that has been the heart of the city's civic life since the 13th century. The piazza's distinctive fan shape slopes gently downward from three sides toward the Fonte Gaia fountain at the lower centre, divided into nine sections by marble lines representing the nine-member government (the Council of Nine) that governed Siena in its medieval heyday. The surrounding Gothic palaces — Palazzo Sansedoni, Palazzo d'Elci, and the others that form the continuous curved facade — date primarily from the 13th to 15th centuries and maintain the strict height and material regulations that preserve the square's visual unity. The Torre del Mangia, rising 88 metres from the corner of the Palazzo Pubblico, is the defining vertical feature of the square and of Siena's skyline, built between 1325 and 1348. The Palazzo Pubblico itself houses the Museo Civico, containing Simone Martini's Maestà (1315) and Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good and Bad Government (1338-1340) — two of the most important secular fresco cycles in medieval Italian art. The piazza is famous above all as the venue for the Palio di Siena, the extraordinary bareback horse race run twice yearly (July 2 and August 16) in which representatives of 10 of Siena's 17 contrade (city wards) race three laps around the square's perimeter in under 90 seconds, preceded by days of elaborate medieval pageantry. Outside Palio season, the piazza is simply a place to sit on the sloping brick paving, buy gelato, and observe Sienese daily life.