The splendid exhibition at the National Gallery of Sienese art from the glory days of the 14th century is perhaps the nearest many visitors will get to the experience of Siena itself. Let me say at the outset though, if you can visit, do. That said, it’s a city built on steps and it’d be a nightmare for any wheelchair users.
For Catholics, the city probably has two associations – the annual palio, or urban horserace, and St Catherine… of Siena. She was a Dominican tertiary, but Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s depiction of A Group of Four Poor Clares, from the 1320s, depicts something of the same serene spirituality. Both the flamboyance of the race and the asceticism of the saint are characteristic of the city in its golden age, which came to an abrupt halt with the arrival of the Black Death in 1350. What outside enemies – for which read Florence – could not do, the bubonic plague did, which was to arrest the development of one of the great 14th-century city states, a marvel of a balanced republican constitution, until the 20th century.
