Pinacoteca Nazionale

The world's finest collection of Sienese painting

The state art gallery, in the 15th-century Palazzo Buonsignori. It holds the most complete survey anywhere of Sienese painting: Duccio, Simone Martini, the Lorenzetti brothers, Sassetta, Giovanni di Paolo, Domenico Beccafumi. The gold-ground panels of the early rooms — Madonnas with elongated necks, severe Christs, infinite spatial recession — are an alternative history of European painting to the Florentine Renaissance.

It is often quiet, almost meditatively so. Allow at least an hour and a half.

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The Pinacoteca holds works by every major Sienese painter from Duccio to the late 16th century, but the rooms are usually nearly empty. It is one of the great underused museums in Europe — most visitors to Siena never set foot in it, even though it is just five minutes' walk from the Campo.

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