Siena’s Museo Civico/City Hall

PART 5: Siena’s Museo Civico/City  Hall

The building at the southeast end of Il Campo is both Siena’s City Hall and City Museum.  The two bottom floors contain paintings and frescos that portray the history of Siena, and the top floor has government offices that are still used today.  Construction started in 1297 and finished in 1310.  About that time the Government of the Nine (the group of nine merchants that ruled the city) adopted it as their headquarters  The Nine became so identified with the building that they were not allowed out of the building except on feast days.  Talk about being tied to your work.  I can’t imagine what it must be like to work in a building where what I was doing was essentially the same as what people who worked there 700 years ago were doing.  We toured the building, and one room we entered was the Council chambers, filled with furniture from the 17^th century  and all set up for a city council meeting.  In one corner was a sophisticated 21 century sound system.  The incongruity was staggering.

The tower on the left side is the Torre del Mangia

In the 12^th century Siena began moving away from government by the Catholic bishops toward government by business men.  It was the equal and intense rival (if not the enemy) of Florence.  The City Hall is where secular government got its start in early Renaissance Europe.  But in 1348 the Black Death killed more than a third of the Sienese population.  The city was irreparably weakened and fell to Florence in 1550.  It has never really recovered.  But the benefits of that is that today we can visit a city that looks very much like it did 600 years ago.

The art in the Museo Civico depicts major events in the city’s history from the late 13^th to the 19^th century.  The works are primarily on secular themes and persons, and the religious works portray saints as human persons living on earth not in a far off heaven.  Both are marks of the burgeoning renaissance attitude of the early 15^th century.  Photography is not allowed in the Museo.  Here are links to three of the Museum’s pieces:  

     Martini’s “Maesta” and “Equestrian Portrait of Guidoriccio da Foligno”
                http://www.casasantapia.com/art/simonemartini.htm

     Lorenzetti’s “Effects of Good and Bad Government”
                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Allegory_of_Good_and_Bad_Government

Until visiting Assisi and Siena I had little appreciation for frescos or murals.  The only ones I can recall are in Coit Tower in San Francisco, which promoted the ideal of equality of all men.  But they were done for a literate audience and their message was also delivered in other media, which dilutes the force of the murals.  But the early renaissance frescos were aimed at a mostly illiterate audience, and so they must have been extremely powerful pieces of education and propaganda.  Their message was:  beauty is not only in the realm of the sacred, but also in the world of man – which is pretty much the main idea of the renaissance.

The top floor is a great place to view the countryside and portions of the city