This warren of narrow streets, some so tight that only the noon sunshine penetrates all the way down to the cobbles, is part gothic, part romanesque, and all beautiful. It’s blessed with an embarrassment of architectural riches and wrapped up in wonderfully preserved medieval walls that hug the city tightly, an enchantingly compact tangle of sandstone and terracotta perched on a hill overlooking a quintessentially Tuscan landscape of olive groves and vineyards and winding gravel roads. In any other corner of the world, Siena would be the only show in town.
Around here though, there are several noisy neighbours. And none makes more of a racket than Florence, 50 miles north, famously the birthplace of the Renaissance and home of the Medici, Michelangelo, Giotto and Leonardo da Vinci. These days, it’s also famous for tourist tuk-tuks and newspaper stories about €25 ice-creams, as overtourism slowly erodes the city’s appeal. Which is why it’s better to avoid the roped-off processions of the Uffizi and choose Siena for an art lovers’ city break instead. (And for anyone who can’t make it to Chianti, the National Gallery in London will begin an extensive exhibition, Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350, in March. It will showcase the city’s importance to European art and its vital role as a catalyst of change.)
