Piazza del Campo is the main public space of the historic center of Siena, a city in Tuscany, Italy, and the campo regarded as one of Europe's greatest medieval squares. It is renowned worldwide for its beauty and architectural integrity. The Palazzo Pubblico and its Torre del Mangia, as well as various palazzi signorili surround the shell-shaped piazza. At the northwest edge is the Fonte Gaia.
The twice-a-year horse-race, Palio di Siena, is held around the edges of the piazza. The piazza is also the finish location of the annual road cycling race Strade Bianche.
History
Gores of brick paving laid out to resemble a shell, viewed from the Torre del Mangia
The open site was a marketplace established before the thirteenth century on a sloping site near the meeting point of the three hillside communities that coalesced to form Siena: the Castellare, the San Martino, and the Camollia. Siena may have had earlier Etruscan settlements, but it was not a considerable Roman settlement, and the campo does not lie on the site of a Roman forum, as is sometimes suggested. The plaza was paved in 1349 in fishbone-patterned red brick with eight lines of travertine, which divide the piazza into nine sections, radiating from the mouth of the gavinone (the central water drain) in front of the Palazzo Pubblico. The number of divisions is held to be symbolic of the rule of The Nine (Noveschi) who laid out the campo and governed Siena at the height of its mediaeval splendour between 1292-1355. The campo was and remains, the focal point of public life in the city. Eleven narrow, shaded streets radiate from the plazza into the city.
The palazzi signorili that line the square were housing of the families of those who dominated governance of the city at the time, such as the Sansedoni, the Piccolomini, and the Saracini. Their homes have unified rooflines, deliberately built to demonstrate a sense of decorum in contrast to earlier high tower houses — seen as emblems of communal strife — such as may still be seen not far from Siena at San Gimignano. In the statutes of Siena, civic and architectural decorum was ordered: "...it responds to the beauty of the city of Siena and to the satisfaction of almost all people of the same city that any edifices that are to be made anew anywhere along the public thoroughfares... proceed in line with the existent buildings and one building not stand out beyond another, but they shall be disposed and arranged equally so as to be of the greatest beauty for the city."[1] The unity of these Late Gothic houses is effected in part by the uniformity of the bricks of which their walls are built: brick-making was a monopoly of the commune, which saw to it that standards were maintained.[1]
At the foot of the Palazzo Pubblico's wall is the late Gothic Chapel of the Virgin built as an ex voto by the Sienese, after the terrible Black Death of 1348 had ended.
Fonte Gaia
Fonte Gaia
The Fonte Gaia ("Joyous Fountain") was built in 1419 as an endpoint of the system of conduits bringing water to the city's centre. It replaced an earlier fountain that had been completed about 1342 when construction of the water conduits was completed. Under the direction of the Committee of Nine, many miles of tunnels were constructed to bring water in aqueducts to fountains and thence to drain to the surrounding fields.
A center of attraction for the many tourists, the present fountain is in the shape of a rectangular basin that is adorned on three sides with many bas-reliefs featuring the Madonna surrounded by the Classical and the Christian Virtues, emblematic of Good Government under the patronage of the Madonna.[2] The white marble Fonte Gaia was originally designed and built by Jacopo della Quercia, whose bas-reliefs from the basin's sides are conserved in the Ospedale di St. Maria della Scala in Piazza Duomo. The original sculptures of goddesses featured on the 1419 fountain were replaced in 1866 by free copies by Tito Sarrocchi, who omitted Jacopo della Quercia's two nude statues of Rhea Silvia and Acca Larentia that the nineteenth-century city fathers found too pagan or too nude. When they had been set up in 1419, Jacopo della Quercia's nude figures were the first two female nudes, who were neither Eve nor a repentant saint, to stand in a public place since Antiquity.[citation needed]
↑ Richard Krautheimer, "A Drawing for the Fonte Gaia in Siena" The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin New Series, 10.6 (June 1952), pp. 265-274, discusses the evolution of the project, 1408-1419.
Jacopo della Quercia, also known as Jacopo di Pietro d'Agnolo di Guarnieri, was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance, a contemporary of Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and Donatello. He is considered a precursor of Michelangelo.
The Palazzo Pubblico is a palace in Siena, Tuscany, central Italy. Construction began in 1297 to serve as the seat of the Republic of Siena's government, which consisted of the Podestà and Council of Nine, the elected officials who performed executive functions. The palace is of medieval and Gothic architecture, and the interior is lined with frescoes--most importantly, the collection known as The Allegory of Good and Bad Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti.
A contrada is generally a district within the Italian countryside. In the city of Siena, the term indicates the 17 urban wards, whose representatives race on horseback in the Palio di Siena, run twice every year in July and August. Each sienese contrada is named after an animal or symbol, with a long history and complicated heraldic and semi-mythological associations.
Regola is the 7th rione of Rome, Italy, identified by the initials R. VII, and belongs to the Municipio I. The name comes from Arenula, which was the name of the soft sand that the river Tiber left after the floods, and that built strands on the left bank.
The decade of the 1410s in art involved some significant events.
Martino di Bartolomeo or Martino di Bartolomeo di Biago was an Italian painter and manuscript illuminator active between 1389 and 1434. He was one of his generation's principal painters of the Sienese School. From specific aspects of his early style, he is believed to have trained in the studio of Taddeo di Bartolo. As a young man Martino collaborated with Giovanni di Pietro da Napoli in Pisa. The fresco cycle in the church of San Giovanni Battista di Cascina, outside Pisa, bears Martino’s signature, and the date 1398. He returned permanently to Siena in 1405; there he painted several prominent fresco cycles in the Duomo and the Palazzo Pubblico. Further official commissions for altarpieces and for polychromy of sculptures attest to his versatility and to his prestige as one of the city’s official artists.
The Fontana delle Tartarughe is a fountain of the late Italian Renaissance, located in Piazza Mattei, in the Sant'Angelo district of Rome, Italy. It was built between 1580 and 1588 by the architect Giacomo della Porta and the sculptor Taddeo Landini. The bronze turtles around the upper basin, usually attributed either to Gian Lorenzo Bernini or Andrea Sacchi, were added in either 1658 or 1659 when the fountain was restored.
The architecture of Rome over the centuries has greatly developed from Ancient Roman architecture to Italian modern and contemporary architecture. Rome was once the world's main epicentres of Classical architecture, developing new forms such as the arch, the dome and the vault. The Romanesque style in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries was also widely used in Roman architecture, and later the city became one of the main centres of Renaissance and Baroque architecture. Rome's cityscape is also widely Neoclassical and Fascist in style.
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena. Siena is the 12th largest city in the region by number of inhabitants, with a population of 53,062 as of 2022.
The Corteo Storico is a historical costume parade in Siena, Tuscany, Italy. It takes place before the famous horse race known as the Palio on the 2nd of July and on August 16, each year.
Tito Sarrocchi was an Italian sculptor.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Siena, Tuscany, Italy.
Giuseppe Partini was an Italian architect, mostly involved in reconstructions in his native Siena.
The Fonte Gaia is a monumental fountain located in the Piazza del Campo in the center of Siena, Italy.
Piazza d'Aracoeli is a square of Rome (Italy), placed at the base of the Capitoline Hill, in the Rione X Campitelli.
Palazzo Sansedoni is a Gothic style urban palace and tower, whose concave facade is situated facing the Palazzo Pubblico across the Piazza del Campo in the political center of the city of Siena, region of Tuscany, Italy.
The Piazza della Santissima Annunziata is a square in the city of Florence, in the Tuscany region of Italy. The Piazza is named after the church of the Annunziata at the head of the square. In the center of the piazza is the bronze Equestrian statue of Ferdinando I and two Mannerist fountains with fantastical figures, all works completed by the Late Renaissance sculptor Pietro Tacca.
Pietro di Giovanni D'Ambrogio was an Italian painter of the Sienese school.
The "Marcia del Palio", commonly also called Squilli la fe', is an ancient hymn that accompanies the historical costume parade called Corteo Storico that precedes the Palio of Siena.
The Bottini di Siena are a complex system of medieval underground aqueducts for the water supply of the city of Siena with a total length of 25 km. The system used to be the main water supply of the entire city of Siena until 1914 and nowadays continues to supply water to the fountains of Siena.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
