2Be in Siena - Siena History

In the 1260 Siena enjoyed a lot prosperity. This unexpected fortune was due to the Francigena street, that passed really through the territory from the republic senese. The city had become wealthy thanks to the customs that were imposed to the travellers, to the earningses of the numerous hostels for wayfarers, and to the commerce that was in strong expansion.
In their trafficis with the European markets, the Senesis were soon in open competition with the bankers and the Florentine merchants. There were wars a lot of battles sustained between 1200 and 1250 among Florence 'guelfa' and Siena 'ghibellina', battles that however had not succeeded in determining a winner! The final battle was in September 4 th 1260 close to Montaperti, where the Florentine army was destroyed by the senese one.

In 1258, in Florence the guelfis succeed to the ghibellinis exiling from Florence the main families of the opposite faction, that found shelter in the Siena ghibellina. The hearts in the two cities, already in fervor, heat up and they culminated in a military action unprecedented: was 1260! The florentins, helped by many Tuscan allies, send against Siena a powerful army composed by the at least 35.000 soldiers, fully armed. In the desperate attempt to defend himself from this murderous horde, the senesis invoked the help of the ghibellino Manfredi (King of Sicily) that however could send only a modest battalion of German riders! Siena was found to fight against well organized Florentine power with a modest number of men: 20.000 unities, a lot of which enlist in hurry among the people of the regions. Was an awful moment for Siena and the situation seemed to turn to the worse! But the senesis, thanks also to the numerous ghibellini support, they a plan, so well done to remain also immortalized in the verses of the Divine Comedy of Dante!

The two army met on the hill of Montaperti in the morning: it was September 4 th 1260. The struggle lasted the whole day and was bloody: the Florentines, despite their numerical supremacy, didn't succeed in crushing the well resolved senesis. Toward the evening the Florentines were exhausted and was then that the clever plan went off! An little number of senesi driven by the Count of Arras launch a modest counterattack: to the eyes of the Florentine commanders had to seem a desperate action and they will dictate him little importance! But well soon they realized that was only the initial action of the plan that would have destroyed them! In fact this attack was the signal for the Florentine Bocca degli Abati, that, even if behind the teams of the invaders, was of ghibellino belief! As he saw the count move toward him, Bocca, with a definite hit of sword, cut the hand to the bringer of the standard of the Florentine cavalry making him fall down. at that times the standards were of fundamental importance both to point out to the soldiers where their commander was both to distinguish between allies and enemies (often suits with the same colors!). With to fall some standard the Florentine troops they were taken by the panic because they didn't know anymore where to direct their attack. In this general disarrangement, hundreds of Florentine ghibellini, hidden among horde guelfa soldiers, took advantage to fiercely fling themselves against the fellow citizens of the opposite faction. At the same time the senese army, even if exhausted and decimated, moved with unheard determination against the oppressor, conquering an overwhelming victory immortalized in the centuries! Has been calculates today that at least 15.000 Florentines lost the life during this clash!

 

Legend says that Siena was founded by Senio and Ascanio, sons of Remus, of the famous duo Romulus and Remus who founded Rome. Statues of the wolf feeding the twins are spotted throughout Siena, but without historical foundation! Instead, the Romans established a military outpost in 30AD called Siena, and it developed into a busy little trading post in the following years.

The Lombards arrived in 6th century AD, and the Franks also had an input in the governing of the city. Great works were carried out, the most important being the Via Francigena, the road which linked Rome to France, used by pilgrims and travellers; this greatly increased Siena's importance. During this time the Church was actively involved in governing the city, especially between the 9th and 11th centuries, after which the Sienese people claimed their right to govern and administer the city.

Economic and military power grew enormously and inevitably friction grew between Siena and Florence, as both cities tried to enlarge their territory. There were many battles between the two cities between the 13th and 15th centuries, some won by Siena, but eventually Florence had the upper hand and Siena was incorporated into Florentine territory and administration.

Despite both external disputes with neighbours and internal disputes over government, in the years 1150-1300 great artists were discovered and the city was adorned with beautiful monuments such as the Duomo, the Palazzo Pubblico and the Torre del Mangia. The Council of Nine, a benificient governing body in the mid-13th century, were behind a lot of these improvements, which you can still see today. However a devastating plague hit Siena in 1348, while the citizens were planning the extension of the Duomo, and killed 3/5 of the population, after which the city was slow to recover.

With a diverse group of rulers from the 14th -19th centuries, including Emperor Charles V and Cosimo I de' Medici, Siena grew in economic power, with the famous bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena giving employment and security to the citizens throughout the ages. When Italy formed a republic, Siena became part of the region of Tuscany and prospers today from a combination of finance and tourism, thanks to its beautiful artistic heritage.

 

address: Piazza del Duomo
schedules: from 16/03 to 31/10 and from 23/12 to 07/01: 10:00-18:00;
from 01/11 to 15/03: 10:30-16:30.

The history of Siena seen after the recent archaeological excavations

Siena coverts a series of hills that, since the prehistoric age, have been interested from more stable installations and it is really on one of the most ancient areas in the city and on the top of one of the tallest necks that, on to end some XI century, the construction of the hospital of Saint it is initiated Maria of the Staircase: a complex building, that has preserved up to our days numerous and multiform traces of a more millennial history.
Up to few years ago, the knowledge of the most ancient phases of the life of the city was limited to few data, particularly to few graves that allowed only to hypothesize the presence of an inhabited area, of which however didn't seem to keep himself/herself/themselves trace. During these last years, instead, the results of the countries of excavation conducted by the Department of Archaeology and History of the Arts of the university in Siena, of agreement with the Archaeological Superintendence in Tuscany, the institution Saint Maria of the Staircase and the Commune in Siena and in collaboration with the Department of History of the university in Siena, they have radically modified the situation, bringing to the light abundant testimoniaze of the city past, exceptionally preserved and preserved by the usury of the centuries below the modern floorings of the hospital.

The most ancient traces of life: the etruscan period

The traces related to the most ancient periods are often difficult to be individualized on the ground, because numerous they are the interventions that can subsequently have her destroyed; to greater reason the operation of recognition and interpretation it does even more him complex, if it deals with the rests of wood huts and mud that, once abandoned and you collapse, they don't leave that the imprints it engraved on the ground from the poles of support of the structure.
Nevertheless, below the ex garden of the Saint Maria of the Staircase, to few meters of distance from the ditch of Sant'Ansano, the patient job of the archaeologists has allowed to bring to the light the little that stays of a great hut, risalente even to age etrusca. It had to treat him of a simple construction, with a base in stone and an elevated in earth, prepared to half coast along the southern slope of the hill on which today the Cathedral rises, in dominant position in comparison to the valley.

The simplicity of the construction materials employed doesn't have however to make to think about a hovel lived by deprived men of means; contrarily, the presence of fragments of bucchero and painted ceramics elegantly, that have been recovered inside the hut or in his/her proximities, it is certainly sign of the elevated social rank which belonged who has lived then in this part of the città.E' difficult to imagine the panorama that surrounded this hut, but it is possible to sustain certainly that it didn't deal with an isolated structure: other traces in fact, even if even more transitory of the first ones, they allow to integrate the scenery, hypothesizing the presence, for the same period, of other residences, prepared on a good part of the hilly slope.

The Roman epoch

The southern slope of the hill owed, since the antiquity, to have a strong inclination, the same one that is easily today still intuibile if, made to mentally disappear the imposing hospital masonries, it strives us to gather accents him gradient that the plaza of the Cathedral separates from the valley of the ditch of Sant'Ansano. And' to Roman epoch that seems to go up again the first important work of regularization, an intervention that partly it destroyed the inhabited etrusco, to create ample terrazzamenti on which a wide installation developed him on the whole slope of the hill. Residences, gardens and zones ortives were alternated along the terraces engraved on the costone of sandstone, while the access to the area happened, with every probability, from south, along a series of tornanti that you/they went up again the hill.
And' to a moment of few following, the so-called slow-ancient period, that you/they seem to be able to be dated the most monumental rests of the Roman epoch, constituted by two masonries faced semicircolari, that defines a building to elliptic plant, that developed him for around 15 meters width, in an almost coincident position with that of the hut etrusca, whose rests preserve him, in fact, few about ten more meters to valley.
The data emerged by the excavations are still in progress of study and they don't allow to give a certain interpretation of this imposing construction but the recovery of fragments of pipings in terracotta utilzzate to heat the environments, besides the recovery of a big number of lastrine of covering in stones of various colors, they make to think about the presence of a great thermal plant, that had to develop awry.

The data emerged by the excavations are still in progress of study and they don't allow to give a certain interpretation of this imposing construction but the recovery of fragments of pipings in terracotta utilzzate to heat the environments, besides the recovery of a big number of lastrine of covering in stones of various colors, they make to think about the presence of a great thermal plant, that had to develop beside.

Rests of a masonry to plant semicircolare, that delimited to east the great building to plant semicircolare

The high middle-age

Traces left on the ground by poles in wood that you/they defined the perimeter of a tall-medieval hut

Passing years, the great building fell in disuse and collapsed, but the frequentation of the area, even though in different ways, didn't stop. The greater part of the stones of the collapse were recovered in fact and the building was used as a mine of building material to employ in different constructions that were realized in the proximities. The low fence in masonry, which was reduced by now the imposing construction of Roman age, also in a first moment had been used to delimit an ample area where was realized a cemetery.
The centuries that followed saw a slow accumulate of thick layers of black earth, rich of organic material, that ended up hiding completely to the sight that little signs that still remained of the most ancient phases, provoking, in the meanwhile, a gradual raising of stamping plans.

On these new levels of life they come back soon to build new huts in wood, from the lengthened basis: after so many years and so much history, the aspect of the hill returned therefore to recall to the memory the image of its first phases of life.

The low medioevo

One of many underground environments recovered during the archaeological excavations

On the ancient terrazzamentis, that in the beginnings of the low medioevo still engraved deeply the hilly slope, conferring him an aspect in which always the hand of the man was visible, it appeared then for the first time, a series of narrow and dark hollow, that pierced the terraces of sandstone. It dealt with caves and burrows that, going down long holds stairways, also dig them in the sandstone, brought to one or more underground environments. They generally composed of an only room from the most regular form, that was often endowed with one or two niches in which the oil lamps could be supported, while the presence of a cross, always engraved in beautiful sight, it had to recall the divine protection on how much in that environments they lived or perhaps on how much you/they had laboriously dug them.

And' to this same period, or to the beginnings of the low medioevo, that it's begun the construction of the hospital, in a moment in which Siena, thanks to the passage of the crowdy Francigena street, seemed to enjoy of a new important economic development. The complex will develop him beginning from a first nucleus built on the plaza, exactly in front of the staircase of access in the cathedral, from which she will take the name of Saint Maria of the Staircase.
The widest part of the structure will be built then in the following centuries, widening itself for following bands of occupation of the hill, from the high one downward and from mountain toward valley, originally englobing open areas, demolishing elevated that were of obstacle to the new organization of the spaces and filling all that voids created by the man for its preceding necessities.

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A moment of excavation in the summer 1999

On what has emerged from the excavations, initiated in 1998 and still in progress, it will is necessary to reflect for a long time, integrating the specialistic job of archaeologists, historians and anthropologists, but how much has emerged till now it is already enough to show the unbelievable cognitive potentiality of the underlying archaeological deposit the hospital.

 

 

Dott.ssa Chiara Saffioti
Dott.ssa Silvia Pallecchi
(responsible of the archaeological investigations within S. Maria della Scala)