Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

The palace presents a clearly ordered layout: a taller central block set between two lower wings, the ground level completed in stone and the upper levels of brick. The main façade faces the central square with a gentle inward curve, and the lower floor is faced in travertine stone while the upper walls are built of brick. The ground story features a sequence of arches that frame doorways and large openings, and above these the façades display three‑arched windows whose white marble columns separate the arches and whose central spaces bear Siena’s black‑and‑white shields.

A large painted disk bearing the Christ monogram, dated to the early 15th century, occupies the centre of the façade; below it the Florentine ruling family’s coat of arms was placed after 1560. Sculpture decorates the entrance area: a small figure of Saint Ansano stands above the right door, and Roman she‑wolf figures flanked the civic emblem, with an additional she‑wolf set on a corner column in the mid-15th century. Small holes set across the masonry show where builders once lodged horizontal scaffold beams during construction.

The roofline is finished with battlements (crenellated parapet), and two small upper bell chambers sit at the summit, the left-hand chamber having been added in the 18th century to balance the appearance. The tall tower attached to the palace was constructed in the period 1325–1348 and is crowned in travertine; when finished it rose higher than any other civic tower in Italy at that time. At the tower’s base the Chapel of the Piazza projects from the façade; it was built in the early 1350s and later received a Renaissance canopy (ciborium, canopy) in the late 15th century. The chapel’s altar area holds a painted Holy Family with Saint Leonard from around 1530, and the choir was carved and inlaid in the early 15th century.

A paved internal courtyard, the podestà’s courtyard, was completed about 1325 and later restored in the early 20th century. The courtyard is surrounded on all four sides by terracotta arcades that rest on octagonal columns with semicircular arches, and large three‑arched windows rise above the arcade. From this courtyard visitors and officials gain access to the museum spaces and the stair that leads up the tower.

Inside, named rooms preserve important works and features. The Hall of the Mappamondo (world map) contains a famed early 14th‑century Maestà and a mounted fresco traditionally linked to a siege scene attributed to a leading Sienese master; a separate castle scene dated 1314 is ascribed to another prominent painter. Evidence remains of a later rotating world map (mappamondo, world map) that once stood in this hall, the mechanism traces still visible on the wall. The Hall of the Nine bears Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s great cycle of the Effects of Good and Bad Government painted in 1338–1339, the panel representing Bad Government showing markedly greater damage than the rest.

Additional painted cycles and movable items are distributed through several chambers: frescoes by Spinello Aretino and his son decorate one hall from the early 15th century, vaulted frescoes by Martino di Bartolomeo and later by Domenico Beccafumi appear in other spaces, and paintings by Sano di Pietro, Sodoma, Vecchietta, Lippo Vanni, Bartolo di Fredi and Taddeo di Bartolo survive in named rooms. The atrium contains bronze bells transferred from a nearby palace, and an organ built in the early 16th century was restored in the late 20th century. Many medieval and later frescoes remain in place, though some paint layers have been altered over time; the large council chamber was adapted into a theatre in 1560, rebuilt after mid-18th‑century fires, and restored in the mid-20th century. The first floor now accommodates the municipal museum while municipal offices and council rooms continue to occupy parts of the building.