Deprived of liberty and independence, without even the showy compensation of the presence of a Court, Siena became a kind of glorified provincial city. The energies of nobles and people alike manifested themselves in the numerous academies for which the Sienese were always famous, in the wild sports of the contrade, in the social and literary gatherings, veglie and trattenimenti, which became proverbial throughout Italy.
For the rest, Siena followed the fortunes of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and shared in the great national awakening of Italy that our own days have seen.
CHAPTER IX
Through the City of the Virgin
AT the famous Croce del Travaglio, where the Bohemian Caesar learned to respect the might of a free people and Giovanni Martinozzi routed the hireling soldiery of the last of the Petrucci, the three chief streets of Siena lead off into the three Terzi: the Via Cavour into the Terzo di Camollia, the Via Ricasoli into the Terzo di San Martino, the Via di Città into the Terzo di Città.
“In every good city,” so runs a report of a commission of the Council of the People in 1398, “provision is made for the adornment and improvement of the city. And you have this your piazza of the Campo which is the most beautiful that exists, and you had that ornament of the Strada de’ Banchi which began at the piazza of the Tolomei and came down as far as Porta Salaia, such that, neither in Venice nor in Florence nor in any other town in this country, was there a more beautiful street. Now it is spoilt; for shoemakers and tailors have returned to it, and it is spoilt. Let therefore our Signori choose four citizens, who shall have to embellish it, so that the bankers shall be together in one part of it, the drapers and goldsmiths in another, the furriers and armourers in another, and that within these limits no other trades can be exercised save those that shall be ordained by these four.”[131] During the fifteenth century, there was a regular magistracy of three citizens elected annually to have the full authority of the General Council in all matters pertaining to the adorning of the city; they were called the Ufficiali sopra l’ornato, and were even empowered to force people to sell houses and sites, when these, from jealousy or other motives, were preventing wealthy citizens from building goodly palaces, bellissimi casamenti—“the which thing causes shame and damage to the city.”[132]
The street referred to in the above document now includes the first sections of the Via Cavour and Via di Città, and is the most animated part of Siena. Turning up the Via di Città, we have on our left the Loggia di Mercanzia, the meeting-place of the merchants of the Republic, the centre of the commercial life of the city in the fifteenth century, which afterwards became the Casino de’ Nobili. It was designed by Sano di Matteo in 1416, and mainly executed about 1438 by Pietro del Minella, in a style (like that of the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence) intermediate between Gothic and Renaissance. Of the saints on the façade, St Peter and St Paul are by Vecchietta, Victor, Ansanus and Savinus by Antonio Federighi; the two marble seats, to right and left, are by Federighi and Il Marrina respectively. On the right, past the meeting-place of the Accademia de’ Rozzi (an institution dating from the early part of the Cinquecento), under a kind of colonnade begin the curious Via dei Beccari, the street of the butchers, with the oxhead of their guild prominently displayed (becoming presently the most picturesque of Siena’s old streets, the Via della Galluzza), and the long Via Fontebranda. Then, on the left, the Costa dei Barbieri leads down into the Campo; here in old times was the Porta Salaia, the name of which is still preserved in the Vicolo di Macta Salaia, a little further on. Guarding the Costa is a fine old tower, called of the “Sette Seghinelle,” with various armorial bearings; opposite it, on the right side of the Via di Città, the Podestà lived, before the building of the present Palazzo Comunale.
Opposite the Costa, the Via dei Pellegrini leads off to the Baptistery. On the right is the Palazzo Bindi Sergardi, with ceiling frescoes by Beccafumi, which were greatly admired in their day, and gained for him the commission to decorate similarly the Sala di Concistoro. On the left, at the foot of the Baptistery, is the famous Palace of the Magnifico, built for Pandolfo Petrucci in the early years of the Cinquecento from the design of Giacomo Cozzarelli, who also cast the splendid metal work on the exterior. The arms of the Petrucci are still to be seen under what was the chief entrance, but the lower part of the palace is very squalid now. Of the frescoes that Luca Signorelli, Girolamo Genga and Bernardino Pinturicchio painted for the Magnifico, there now remains nothing but a few fragments in one room, doubtfully ascribed to the last-named master. Hardly can we now conjure up in imagination the days when Machiavelli, coming here as ambassador of the Signoria of Florence, found Pandolfo after dinner surrounded by the chief men of his faction, whom he had invited to talk over the matter, or when Borghese gathered together all the loveliest women of Siena at a banquet to do honour to the younger Lorenzo de’ Medici.
From the Costa de’ Barbieri, the Via di Città leads up into the very heart of old Siena—the Castello Vecchio. On the left is the Palazzo Saracini, a Gothic palace of the thirteenth century completely restored, which came into the possession of the Saracini—whose Saracen’s head and eagle adorn the façade—at the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the olden days it was the Palazzo Marescotti, and the tower that we see, if not in
