Palazzo dei Priori, Montalcino site features

The building faces Piazza del Popolo, and this is the first practical thing to know about it: it faces that square but is entered from the Costa del Municipio, and it runs back as far as Piazza Garibaldi, known locally as Padella. People stand in front of it looking for a door that is round the side.

It is predominantly stone, on a polygonal plan, with vertical structures in pietra forte and a pitched roof covered in brick tile.

At street level is a loggia, open to the square, and inside it stands the statue of Cosimo I de' Medici. Above the loggia the building presents two facades, each with a window opening at its centre — those windows were reopened in the restoration of the 1930s.

Then the tower, which is what you see from across the town. On the right-hand side of the building rises an imposing and slender tower of 62 metres, in stone and brick, which the people of Montalcino call il Campanone.

Read it from the bottom up, because it is organised in bands. The lower part carries numerous family coats of arms, the Medici arms among them. Above those, in order: the clock; then il Campanone itself, the great bell the tower is named for; and at the very top, a smaller bell.

One detail is worth hunting for. The tower was raised by a few courses of brick after the Medici took over, and the change of material where the heightening begins is still legible from the square — a political alteration recorded in masonry.

• The 62-metre tower, "il Campanone" — imposing and slender, in stone and brick, rising from the right-hand side of the building and named by the Montalcinesi after its great bell.
• The family coats of arms — numerous, on the lower part of the tower, the Medici arms among them.
• The clock, the Campanone and the smaller bell — stacked in that order up the upper part of the tower.
• The brick heightening — the tower was raised by some courses of brick under Medici rule, and the join is still visible from the square.
• The loggia — at street level, converted from the earlier closed ground floor after the Medici conquest.
• The statue of Cosimo I de' Medici — set just outside the loggia when it was made, and standing inside it today.
• The two facades above the loggia — each with a central window, both reopened in the restoration of the 1930s.
• The pietra forte structure — vertical members in that stone, under a pitched roof of brick tile, on a polygonal plan.
• The site of the mint — the lower part of the building, a salt store at first, which became the mint of the Republic of Siena sheltered at Montalcino.