Inhabited since the 8th century B.C, as proven by the settlements discovered at Campassini and the vast Etruscan necropolis of Casone, the communal region of Monteriggioni preserves numerous testimonies of the past. The main points of interest are the Castle of Monteriggioni and the nearby Abbadia Isola, but the entire area is punctuated by castles, parish churches, villas and small villages.

Situated at the northern end of the region, Monteriggioni occupies the peak of a small, rolling hill covered with cultivated slopes, vineyards and olives.
The castle was founded in the second decade of the thirteenth century by the Republic of Siena, with the purpose of creating a defence outpost against its rival Florence. For centuries the settlement carried out the function for which it was created, repelling a multitude of sieges and attacks. Inhabited by soldiers and many civilian families, from the middle of the sixteenth century its military function ceased when the entire Sienese state, to which our village belonged, was annexed to the Florentine state.

Much of the XIII century structure remains which makes Monteriggioni utterly unique in the panorama of medieval Tuscan villages. Its more or less circular walls, which embrace the peak of the hill, are constructed over roughly 570 metres and crowned with fourteen towers that rise up from the external surface. Their majesty must have been so impressive in the Middle Ages that Dante used the turrets as the famous simile for the giants encircling the infernal abyss in his Divine Comedy.
The village sheltered within the walls can be accessed through two gates (a third has been constructed) and centres around a large rectangular square looked over by the parish of S. Maria Assunta. This building is the best example of the preservation of medieval features, even if in the entire area with its characteristic alley ways, there are many houses that exhibit their ancient origin.

In the heart of Tuscany, in the southwest corner of the Chianti region, Monteriggioni castle was built in the second decade of the thirteenth century by the Republic of Siena. Its original purpose was as a defensive outpost against Siena’s rival, Florence. Home to garrisons of soldiers, but also a large number of civilian families, its military use declined in the middle of the sixteenth century, when the Sienese State, to which the castle belonged, was annexed by Florence.
Today, Monteriggioni still retains most of its thirteenth-century structure, beginning with the circular exterior wall. Completely realised in stone, it supports fourteen rectangular towers jutting into the sky, immortalised by Dante in the Divine Comedy. In the main square, which is reached by two doors (a third has been walled up), sits the church of Santa Maria Assunta. This is certainly the structure that bestretains its medieval character; although, throughout the grounds, down the alleyways, there
are still many houses which display their ancient origins.


The Church of Santa Maria Assunta

The late Romanesque church of Santa Maria Assunta faces the piazza Roma. It was consecrated sometime between the building of the defensive walls (1213) and 1235, when the peace treaty between Siena, Florence, and Poggibonsi was signed here. Santa Maria Assunta's association with pilgrims tracing the Via Francigena route continues to this day. A notice on the door offers lodging assistance to pilgrims. To the left of the church as you face it is the tourist information office, where you can obtain lodging and other information on Monteriggioni.

Ufficio Turistico di Monteriggioni
Piazza Roma, 23
53035 Monteriggioni (Siena-Italy)
tel. +39 0577 304834 / +39 0577 573213

The Chiocciola Castle was one of the many medieval fortresses that rose, and in large part still rise, in the district of Monteriggioni, outpost of the Senese power. The castle is famous for the spiral staircase that is located inside the circular tower of the castle, and that takes up to the top of the tower. In italian that type of staicase is called scala a chiocciola.

Santa Colomba has medieval origins but suffered serious damage in 1364 during the passage of the company of Giovanni Acuto (John Hawkwood). Of this period, the church, containing valuable frescos from the 14th century, and a defence tower which was later used as a bell tower for the religious building remain. Other remains of medieval walls can be seen in the base of the grandiose Renaissance villa which stands at the centre of the small hamlet and was built between the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century by the Lord of Siena, Pandolfo Petrucci. Attributed to the Sienese architect Baldassarre Peruzzi, it was originally equipped with a majestic garden which was destroyed to make place for the subsequent extensions to the villa itself.

The local unit of CAI maintains a network of trails departing from Santa Colomba (CAI lO2 to Monteriggioni, Cal l06 to Abbadia lsola, and CA1114 through Tegoia to Molino d'Elsa.
A specific map was produced for the occasion (“Hiking the Montagnola”) and special signposting installed).


Colle Ciupi

The originally medieval village is now a small rural area with recently restored peasant cottages. In its centre the Romanesque church of S. Lorenzo still stands with a single nave and simple architectural lines. The value of the building lies in the cycle of frescos on the interior walls which, for the main part, go back to the fourteenth century and are attributed to the school of Duccio di Buoninsegna.

Recorded at the end of the 13th century, the hermitage stands on the margins of what was called, in the medieval period, the lake of Verano. The lake was situated south of Monteriggioni but is no longer in existence. When it became part of the congregation of the Hermit Brothers of St. Augustine in 1243, S. Leonardo it was aggregated to the nearby hermitage of Lecceto a few years later where it remained until 1516. At the start of the fourteenth century, the Blessed Agostino Novello, an important religious figure who had taken up residence during the last years of his life, died here.

A noteworthy element of the architectural complex is the beautiful church with a single nave built entirely in stone, excellently conserving the simplicity of its medieval lines. Inside, the small square apse is decorated by a cycle of 14th century frescos by the Siena born painter Lippo Vanni. To the side of the church, as well as the remains of a defensive wall with turrets, there are cloisters and a part of the monks' dwellings, amongst which should be highlighted the refectory frescoed by Giovanni di Paolo in the 15th century.
The painting, although somewhat damaged by a partition wall built in the room in 1810 after the hermitage was suppressed, is an important milestone in early fifteenth-century Sienese painting. The scene, whose intensity is heightened by the contrast of the monochrome figures against the reddish background, is characterized by a tight, spare painting style distinguished by a strong linear quality and a compositional tension, particularly strong in the expressions on the faces.

Not far from the hermitage of S. Leonardo stands the so-called Pyramid, an obelisk to the memory of the eighteenth century draining of the area below, which is still known today as the Pian del Lago (the Lake Plain). The Pyramid also signals the start of the Grand Duke's canal, a tunnel of around two kilometres long which served to permit the running off of the waters and which is perfectly preserved and still usable today.


Eremo di San Leonardo al Lago
Località Santa Colomba
Orario di apertura:
chiuso il lunedì.
Aperto (gratuitamente) dal
martedì alla domenica
dalle ore 9.30 alle ore 15.30

The Certosa di Belriguardo or Belriguardo Charterhouse stands high on the hills sur-rounding Siena, some 7 kilometres (4½ miles) from city centre. The site ideally fits into the breath-taking Tuscan landscape, where vines and olive trees joyfully take turns in an array of colours and sceneries sharply marking out this land ideally suited for vine-growing.
The winery, stretching over some 75 (160 acres) hectares, of which only 8 hectares (17 acres) are planted with vineyards.
The charterhouse’s historical building (its construction got under way in 1340 and was completed in 1347) is graced with a double cypress row and stands at the very entrance to the farm on a slope overlooking Siena. The first twelve monks settled in at Bel-riguardo (Italian for “beautiful view”) as early as 1348, as can be ascertained from a papal bull dispatched that year to the Bishop of Siena by Pope Clement the Sixth from his exile in Avignon, France. The recordings in the cellar’s registers instead date back to the beginning of the Sixteenth century and vouch for the existence of a “bangle bower” with a plentiful and much valued production of wine sold on the Sienese market.

Although it is difficult to identify a precise route of the Via Francigena, the stretch that crosses the province of Siena is one of the most fascinating sights of artistic and cultural as well as pristine natural areas.
The historic centre of Siena has been declared by UNESCO a World Heritage Site. It is one of the nation's most visited tourist attractions, with over 163,000 international arrivals in 2008. Siena is famous for its cuisine, art, museums, medieval cityscape and the Palio, a horse race held twice a year.
And it is thanks to this important road that Siena flourished in the first centuries of second millennium. Not only the Via Francigena does runs through the province of Siena from north to south; it also penetrates into the town of the Palio, in particular in the districts called Città and San Martino.

The history of Siena has been made on the Piazza del Campo, or better, 'il Campo', as the Sienese call it. Here the Sienese organised their spectacular and terrible 'games', later replaced by the Palio, where they celebrated and played games of risk (il Campo was the only place where the games were allowed). The market also used to take place here. Il Campo has witnessed the passage of memorable characters in the history of Siena: Santa Caterina, the mystic saint deeply linked to the image of Siena, and also artists such as Simone Martini or Jacopo della Quercia.

Piazza del Campo is a unique place in the whole of the world, starting with the very particular conformation of the ground, which turns the square into a big concave shell. The paving is made of red bricks arranged in fishbone style, divided into a sunburst pattern by nine strips of travertine (in memory of the Government of the Nine, who ruled over the city from 1292 to 1355). The white marble of the Fonte Gaia stands out on the paving, it is the masterpiece of 1419 by Jacopo della Quercia, later replaced by a copy. There is also the Palazzo Comunale (town hall), unusually built on the lowest part of the square, and also the tall, slender Torre del Mangia that stands out against the sky (it reaches 102 metres including the lightning conductor). At the base of the Palazzo is the Chapel of the Virgin, or Chapel of the Square, constructed and voted for by the Sienese, after the end of the terrible plague of 1348. And surrounding the chapel are the elegant façades of the Palazzi Signorili, belonging to the wealthiest of families: the Sansedoni, the Piccolomini, and the Saracini.

The piazza took shape at the end of the 1200s, on a space that was for a long time used for fairs and markets and was situated at a crossroad of important streets. When it was built (the flooring dates back to the 1300s, it managed to hold the entire population of Siena, who gathered here to attend events, tournaments, and buffalo and bull races. Piazza del Campo has hosted almost all the important events in the history of the city, from the time of the Republic up until the Medici period, during which Siena come under the control of Firenze di Cosimo I de'Medici.[2]

Il Duomo or Cattedrale dell'Assunta is a splendid example of the Italian Gothic.The building, begun in 1230, replaced a previous cathedral of the IX century, entitled Santa Maria. The cupola (or Dome) was added in 1264, but in the 1300s the church was completely transformed: the central nave was raised and illuminated by trifora (three-arched) windows, the façade was worked on by, amongst others, Giovanni Pisano, the chorus was changed, and above all, the transept was widened, in the ambitious attempt to transform the cathedral into the biggest temple of Christianity. Of this last insane widening, begun in the first half of the 1300s and interrupted by the terrible plague of 1348 (as well as by the collapse of some of the structures), there remain traces of the structures effectively built on the left side of the current Duomo: the so-called 'facciatona', the columns of the three naves and a part of the left side, where you can see what is certainly the most brilliant door of the Sienese Gothic. The door opens onto the staircase that leads to the lower Baptistry of San Giovanni.

After the failure of the plan for the New Duomo, work, from then on, concerned the old building. The façade was finished in a gothic style at the end of the 1300s, integrating the part by Giovanni Pisano. The originals of the marble statues (some of which are the work of Pisano), that enrich the façade with depictions of Saints, Prophets, and allegorical Sybils and Animals, are assembled on the ground floor of the Museo dell'Opera.

The dominant theme on the inside of the Cathedral, apart from the wideness of the naves and of the transept (in imitation of the Romanesque Duomo di Pisa), is the colour: the two colour print of the covering, in horizontal strips (the recurring theme of the Sienese 'Balzana') covers the whole of the structure, including the pillars, unifying the richness of the architecture into a homogenous togetherness. The space seems to have been built entirely from colour and light, more than from the solidity of the mass masonry.

The huge masterpiece, not only of Sienese art, on which worked the greatest Sienese artists of the 1400s and 1500s, is the spectacular multi-coloured marble flooring, that covers the whole of the inside of the Duomo like an enormous carpet. Divided into 52 squares, there are depictions of biblical scenes in prevalence, the most famous of which is the Massacre of the Innocents, carried out according to the design by Matteo di Giovanni, in 1482.

Siena | Palazzo Pubblico
Siena | Duomo