Grand Tour

Siena was a much loved city as it was located at the end of a particularly pleasant stretch of the route and the beginning of one that travelers found something of a nightmare: the passage through the territories of the Papal States, notorious for the neglect of their roads and the threat of brigandage. It was this position, on the Via Francigena, the ancient road from Rome to Lombardy, that preserved it from the obscure fate of minor towns and cities, normally overlooked, and placed it on the itinerary of almost all foreign visitors to Italy. After Florence, it was the city they liked best. «Siena seemed [...] suspended between two different worlds, two divergent historical and environmental conditions» symbolized by the two gates of entry and exit from the city: Porta Camollia, or Porta Fiorentina, which was the gate opening onto «the world of culture, the tamed countryside, the imminent horizon of history,» and Porta Romana which ked instead into «wild nature, the eroded landscape of the Crete and the swampy coastlands» (Brilli, 1986).

Siena had in part suffered the same fate as Pisa and was portrayed as a city in decline, clinging to a mere shadow of its medieval prosperity as the population had fallen considerably since the days when it was a republic: its economic decline following the loss of its political freedom was evident. While the sense of aimlessness and decadence «was often translated into figures that artificially widened the gap between past and present,» it is undeniable that the mercantile wealth that had distinguished the city, once a leader in the banking and manufacturing (wool and silk) sectors, had been converted into landed estates and the middle classes had slipped back into a feudal condition «with the whole baggage of arrogance and abuse that traditionally characterizes this archaic type of social structure» (Brilli, 1986).

But the depressing picture of decline was counterbalanced in travelers' accounts by a number of equally unshakable but positive commonplaces. The first was the appreciation for the warm welcome that the city gave to visitors and the agreeableness of a place in which the inhabitants were considered by all to be courteous, cheerful, open-minded and free of affectation. This was so universal an opinion that even de Brosses, who thought the city «not very graceful and dismal like all cities built of brick» (1740), praised the amiable character of the Sienese nobility and the charm and beauty of the women, especially in comparison with the ones in Florence who he, and many others, did not find pleasant company.

Another unanimously recognized strongpoint was the musicality of the Sienese dialect, considered superior to the Florentine one as it lacked its harshness. The city was seen as the ideal place to learn the Italian language, since it was spoken in the most correct and musical way there. James Boswell for example, staying there for reasons of health in 1765, took advantage of the opportunity to improve his own grasp of the language and learn a little music.

The third evergreen clichè was linked to Siena’s reputation as a place to stay in the summer, «with the connotations of a genuine spa» (Brilli, 1986a). The salubrity of the air, something that was attributed at one time or another to all the cities of Tuscany, seems to have reached its quintessence here. Even de Sade (1776) could not fail to mention it. While wondering provocatively how it was that the sweetest language was spoken in an almost deserted city rather than in the capital, he was obliged to admit that Siena was a very agreeable place: «the tranquility that holds sway there is made to please all sorts of people, the air is pure, the countryside delightful, the society enjoyable».

Siena had numerous “tourist” attractions, but the most striking of all was the cathedral with its distinctive alternating stripes of black and white marble, so similar to the coat of a zebra, and its sumptuous inlaid floor. It was also, as Misson was the first to note (1688), a finished building, something that was not often to be found in Italy. Then there were other churches that caught the attention of travelers, including the chapel of the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala, the celebrated pilgrims’ hospice that had been turned into a hospital. Mention was often made of the miracles of St. Catherine, whether the travelers gave them credence or regarded them as pure superstition: «I shall skip the rest of the city’s curiosities, which are worth less than what I have told you, except for a portion of ground protected by a railing at the Dominicans and said to be the place where St. Catherine of Siena used to stroll with the young Jesus, who made love to her, as the legend has it, but was honest in the end, for you know that he married her afterward» (De Brosses, 1740).

The most striking elements of the city's civil architecture were the Palazzo Pubblico and, of course, the Piazza del Campo. About the latter, indeed, a number of curious rumors were in circulation, all of which can be traced back to Misson (1688), who had compared it to a shell and suggested using it as a reservoir of water that could be employed to put out fires, once it had been filled. From this idea stemmed others, such as that of turning the square into an artificial lake for boating or even for staging naumachiae. De Brosses described it as follows: « it is shaped almost like a shell or a bowl. It can be filled with water when desired by means of a large and abundant fountain that stands on the upper part, and then one can sail around the square in a boat, while the carriages for their part drive along the edges and all around the bowl.» The square triggered a great « proliferation of metaphors» in the mind of travelers (Brilli, 1986): a shell washed by the sea of time, an oyster shell, “a bit of Venice, without the water,” in Dickens's celebrated characterization (1844).

What impressed people about the life of the city, as always, were the games and festivities. Like and to an even greater extent than the Gioco del Ponte in Pisa , it was the Palio that stirred great passions here. The spectacular character of the scene caught the imagination of visitors and the originality of the Sienese festival was sensed by all of them, often prompting them to pen highly detailed descriptions. Brilli points out two elements worthy of reflection in this connection. The first concerns the possibility of grasping «the passionate nature of the spectacle [...] which has its roots in the age-old tradition of the city.» The second relates instead to the lack of proportion between the pomp and circumstance with which the authorities displayed their power and the emptiness, formalism and lack of incisiveness of the power they actually wielded (Brilli, 1986a).

In the later period of the Grand Tour, when the physiognomy of the medieval centers started to attract new and strong interest, we begin to find traces of an enthusiastic study of the art of the Sienese “primitives,” of their painting and architecture. And a new face of the country started to emerge, one that was well known to Italians but had previously been overshadowed among Grand Tourists by the predominance of a “classicistic” orientation, leading them to regard artistic expressions of Gothic origin as “barbaric.”