Museo Civico

City museum inside the Palazzo Pubblico with Sienese masterpieces

The civic museum inside the Palazzo Pubblico, which alone justifies a visit to Siena. The route runs through the great state rooms of the Republic, including:

  • The Sala del Mappamondo with Simone Martini's Maestà (1315) and the disputed equestrian portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano
  • The Sala dei Nove with Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegory and Effects of Good and Bad Government — the most important surviving secular fresco cycle of the Middle Ages
  • The Cappella del Consiglio with Taddeo di Bartolo's frescoes

A combined ticket includes the Torre del Mangia.

things to do museum
A story
Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good and Bad Government (1338–1339) in the Sala dei Nove was painted not as a religious image but as direct moral instruction for the Nine, the merchant council who governed Siena. It is the most ambitious surviving secular fresco from the Middle Ages and arguably the first European painting to depict ordinary life — peasants, shopkeepers, dancers — as a subject in its own right.

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