Siena

Siena by Jane Stevenson is an authoritative and richly illustrated history that affectionately celebrates Siena, one of the best-loved and most-visited cities in Italy.

Occupying a hilltop site amidst a vast, undulating landscape, Siena attracts contemporary tourists as much as Florence. However, its proud republican past presents an intriguing contrast to its Medici-dominated northern Tuscan rival, with which it vied for local supremacy during much of the High Middle Ages.

From the twelfth century, Siena profited from its advantageous position on a major pilgrim route, developing into a major European power and remaining an important commercial, financial, and artistic centre for four centuries.

Jane Stevenson explores the changing fortunes of a city that experienced an astonishingly productive cultural heyday in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Despite suffering a catastrophic late medieval decline in the aftermath of the Black Death, Siena transcended the loss of its wider political power to enjoy a prosperous civic afterlife.

Today, Siena holds a cherished position as a uniquely well-preserved medieval city, abundant with world-class art and architecture, furnished with appealing and intriguing traditions, and set in a heavenly landscape.