culture
Siena
Siena city of art, culture good food, and obviously city of the Palio. Many are its faces of its unique beauty.
Lying in the Tuscan hills, it still maintains its appearance unchanged and time in Siena seems to have stopped at the thirteenth century, when the city began to enrich itself with an artistic and architectural heritage that has consecrated its glory forever.
Unesco registered Siena in the world heritage list in 1995, for having wisely preserved important characteristics of its medieval structure, defining it "a masterpiece of dedication and inventiveness in which the buildings were designed to be adapted to the entire design of the urban structure" .
To describe Siena it is necessary to start from its main square, Piazza del Campo, the same where the Palio takes place, the same one full of restaurants and bars, the same where tourists and inhabitants linger in ecstasy upside down to admire the surrounding monuments.
All around the square, monumental buildings such as Palazzo Sansedoni and the Palazzo Pubblico. Looking at the square from its 102 meters high is the Torre del Mangia which dates back to the forties of the fourteenth century. Its height is equal to that of the bell tower of the Cathedral to symbolize the balance reached between divine and earthly power. At the foot of the tower stands the Chapel of the Piazza, a marble tabernacle with splendid sculptures inserted in the Gothic niches. All in the same square.
But Siena is not just Piazza del Campo: all around there are churches, such as the beautiful San Domenico and Santa Maria dei Servi, small streets full of shops where you can buy local handicraft products or taste the mythical cantucci biscuits accompanied by a glass of Vin Santo, Siena wine.
Between the narrow streets and the wide Piazza del Campo you can breathe the real atmosphere of Siena, a very ancient city, monumental and lively.
Posted by Alessandro Castelnuovo
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