Piazza del Campo

Piazza del Campo owes its name to the campo that once housed the market of the city of Siena.

It has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is considered one of the most beautiful squares in the world.

Its shell shape, paved in sedimentary stone, is divided into nine parts, in memory of the nine Lords who governed Siena at the end of the 13th century.

It is the heart of the city of Siena and in it, twice a year (2 July and 16 August) the famous Palio di Siena is celebrated, where knights and horses from the Sienese neighborhoods compete on a terrain composed of tuff and sand.

Piazza del Campo overlooks some of Siena’s most important monuments including the Palazzo Pubblico, the building that housed the city government since the 13th century.

The Palazzo Pubblico today houses the Civic Museum with numerous masterpieces by authors such as Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Simone Martini.

Another symbolic monument of the city of Siena, which can be admired from Piazza del Campo, is the Torre del Mangia, 102 meters high and built at the beginning of the 14th century: the Tower can be visited and from its top you can admire all of Siena.

On another side of Piazza del Campo is the monumental Fonte Gaia fountain. It is a nineteenth-century copy of the original created by the sculptor Jacopo della Quercia in the fifteenth century.
According to local tradition, the name seems to derive from the happiness of the population when they saw the water gushing in Piazza del Campo for the first time.