Siena attractions

Siena's sights are concentrated in a historic centre that is itself the World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1995 under criteria i, ii and iv. The two that organise everything else are Piazza del Campo, the shell-shaped brick square divided into nine segments for the republic's Council of Nine, and the Duomo complex — cathedral, Piccolomini Library, baptistery, crypt and museum on one combined ticket, holding sculpture by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano, Donatello, Michelangelo and Bernini.

Two climbs give the city's shape, and they are different views of the same thing: the Torre del Mangia from the Palazzo Pubblico on the square, and the Facciatone, the standing wall of the cathedral nave that the Black Death stopped. Opposite the Duomo, Santa Maria della Scala is the medieval hospital, now a museum, and the Pinacoteca Nazionale holds the Sienese painters.

Beyond the monuments, the thing worth seeking out is the contrade: seventeen neighbourhood communities with their own churches, fountains and small museums in the streets above the square, which is where the living city is and where almost no day-tripper goes.