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Siena: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval City
An authoritative, richly illustrated history, and affectionate celebration, of Siena, one of the best-loved and most-visited cities in Italy.
Occupying a hilltop site in the midst of a vast, undulating landscape – between the wine-producing region of Chianti to the north and the truffle-filled woods of the Crete Senesi to the south – Siena is as much a magnet for contemporary tourism as Florence.
However, its proud republican past presents an intriguing contrast with its Medici-dominated northern Tuscan rival, with which it tussled for local supremacy for much of the High Middle Ages. From the twelfth century, profiting from its advantageous position on a major pilgrim route, the Republic of Siena developed into a major European power and remained an important commercial, financial and artistic centre for four centuries.
Jane Stevenson tells the story of how the city rose to its astonishingly productive cultural heyday in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries before suffering a catastrophic late medieval decline in the aftermath of the Black Death. But she also reveals how it transcended this early loss of power to enjoy a prosperous civic afterlife and cherished position as a uniquely well-preserved medieval city, crammed with world-class art and architecture, furnished with appealing and intriguing traditions, and set in a heavenly landscape.
Occupying a hilltop site in the midst of a vast, undulating landscape – between the wine-producing region of Chianti to the north and the truffle-filled woods of the Crete Senesi to the south – Siena is as much a magnet for contemporary tourism as Florence.
However, its proud republican past presents an intriguing contrast with its Medici-dominated northern Tuscan rival, with which it tussled for local supremacy for much of the High Middle Ages. From the twelfth century, profiting from its advantageous position on a major pilgrim route, the Republic of Siena developed into a major European power and remained an important commercial, financial and artistic centre for four centuries.
Jane Stevenson tells the story of how the city rose to its astonishingly productive cultural heyday in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries before suffering a catastrophic late medieval decline in the aftermath of the Black Death. But she also reveals how it transcended this early loss of power to enjoy a prosperous civic afterlife and cherished position as a uniquely well-preserved medieval city, crammed with world-class art and architecture, furnished with appealing and intriguing traditions, and set in a heavenly landscape.
432 pages, Hardcover
Published October 13, 2022
16 people are currently reading
255 people want to read
About the author
Jane Stevenson
50 books24 followersDr. Jane Stevenson (born 1959) is a UK author who was born in London and brought up in London, Beijing and Bonn. She has lectured in history at Sheffield University, and teaches literature and history at the University of Aberdeen. Her fiction books include Several Deceptions, a collection of four novellas; a novel, London Bridges; and the historical trilogy made up of the novels The Winter Queen, The Shadow King, and The Empress of the Last Days. Stevenson lives in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Her academic publications include Women Latin Poets (Oxford University Press), Early Modern Women Poets with Peter Davidson (Oxford University Press) and The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby, co-edited with Peter Davidson (Prospect Books).
Her academic publications include Women Latin Poets (Oxford University Press), Early Modern Women Poets with Peter Davidson (Oxford University Press) and The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby, co-edited with Peter Davidson (Prospect Books).
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 2, 2024
‘This town is worth fifty Florences,’ said Ruskin when he hit up Siena – and a modern visitor might well agree, since Siena gets only a fraction of its northern neighbour's tourist traffic and is a lot more manageable in size.
The relative smallness, combined with the city walls and the views out over the idealised Tuscan countryside (now often protected by UNESCO status), conspire to make Siena feel, as Jane Stevenson puts it, like ‘a glimpse of that ideal city which has been a constant human dream since antiquity’.
Well, maybe. In the summer months you are still likely to be squinting at this landscape past hordes of visitors with Lonely Planets, and while, apparently, ‘the beauty of Sienese women is proverbial’, these days the eye-candy is more likely to come from perspiring holidaymakers in backpack-creased sundresses. And god bless them.
In any case, it was always a struggle for the Sienese to achieve even a halfway liveable city, let alone an ideal one, for most of its history. As a Ghibelline (i.e. pro-Empire) stronghold sandwiched between two Guelf cities (the pro-Pope bases of Rome and Florence), they were constantly fending off acquisitive overtures, military and otherwise, which perhaps reinforced their strain of proud independence at least while it lasted.
They tried a number of different governing councils (the Thirty-Six, the Fifteen, the ominous-sounding ‘Gentlemen’) in an attempt to balance the different local interests. The most successful by far were the Nine, who ruled for over fifty years in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, presumably before their Rings of Power corrupted them to the will of Sauron.
Eventually, like pretty much all the Italian city-states, they succumbed to ‘the conflict between the Habsburgs and the French kings’ in the seventeenth century, and were one of the first cities to sign up to join a united Italy during the Risorgimento. ‘No surprise,’ Stevenson suggests: ‘far better, from a Sienese point of view, to be a city on a level with all the other cities of Italy, than playing second fiddle to Florence.’
I was interested to see Stevenson's argument for ‘a sceptical, freethinking, critical and scientific streak to Sienese culture’. I was unaware of the inventor and polymath Taccola, sometimes called the ‘Sienese Archimedes’, who was a huge influence on Leonardo da Vinci; and also of Bernardino Ochino, an important voice of the Reformation, who ended up fleeing to England and becoming a prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral. Less obscure – and less heterodox – are Catherine of Siena, who was a fascinating political player, and Pope Pius II, who, Stevenson says, was ‘the only pope to write both an autobiography and a novel’.
The art, of course, is incredible in Siena, especially if (like me) you prefer the baffling gold-leafed medieval stuff to the Renaissance highlights of Florence, although you do need to be prepared to see about a thousand variations on the madonna col bambino. They are priceless now; it was very different when this art was just being rediscovered, when British dealers would smuggle altarpieces out in their suitcases, or get them for pennies from down-at-heel curates.
Jane Stevenson tells the story in smart, no-nonsense prose; her bibliography is pleasingly vast and she seems up-to-date on the latest research both in art history and in historical events like the Black Death. As a microcosm of Italian history, especially during the Middle Ages, it's a revealing story, and in addition will allow you to look down your nose at the people at the next table who are reading Frances Mayes.
The relative smallness, combined with the city walls and the views out over the idealised Tuscan countryside (now often protected by UNESCO status), conspire to make Siena feel, as Jane Stevenson puts it, like ‘a glimpse of that ideal city which has been a constant human dream since antiquity’.
Well, maybe. In the summer months you are still likely to be squinting at this landscape past hordes of visitors with Lonely Planets, and while, apparently, ‘the beauty of Sienese women is proverbial’, these days the eye-candy is more likely to come from perspiring holidaymakers in backpack-creased sundresses. And god bless them.
In any case, it was always a struggle for the Sienese to achieve even a halfway liveable city, let alone an ideal one, for most of its history. As a Ghibelline (i.e. pro-Empire) stronghold sandwiched between two Guelf cities (the pro-Pope bases of Rome and Florence), they were constantly fending off acquisitive overtures, military and otherwise, which perhaps reinforced their strain of proud independence at least while it lasted.
They tried a number of different governing councils (the Thirty-Six, the Fifteen, the ominous-sounding ‘Gentlemen’) in an attempt to balance the different local interests. The most successful by far were the Nine, who ruled for over fifty years in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, presumably before their Rings of Power corrupted them to the will of Sauron.
Eventually, like pretty much all the Italian city-states, they succumbed to ‘the conflict between the Habsburgs and the French kings’ in the seventeenth century, and were one of the first cities to sign up to join a united Italy during the Risorgimento. ‘No surprise,’ Stevenson suggests: ‘far better, from a Sienese point of view, to be a city on a level with all the other cities of Italy, than playing second fiddle to Florence.’
I was interested to see Stevenson's argument for ‘a sceptical, freethinking, critical and scientific streak to Sienese culture’. I was unaware of the inventor and polymath Taccola, sometimes called the ‘Sienese Archimedes’, who was a huge influence on Leonardo da Vinci; and also of Bernardino Ochino, an important voice of the Reformation, who ended up fleeing to England and becoming a prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral. Less obscure – and less heterodox – are Catherine of Siena, who was a fascinating political player, and Pope Pius II, who, Stevenson says, was ‘the only pope to write both an autobiography and a novel’.
The art, of course, is incredible in Siena, especially if (like me) you prefer the baffling gold-leafed medieval stuff to the Renaissance highlights of Florence, although you do need to be prepared to see about a thousand variations on the madonna col bambino. They are priceless now; it was very different when this art was just being rediscovered, when British dealers would smuggle altarpieces out in their suitcases, or get them for pennies from down-at-heel curates.
Charles Fairfax Murray […] used to sit in the Caffè Greco in Siena and bang his stick on the table, shouting: ‘Bring out your Madonnas! Bring out your Madonnas! Two hundred lire! Two hundred lire!’
Jane Stevenson tells the story in smart, no-nonsense prose; her bibliography is pleasingly vast and she seems up-to-date on the latest research both in art history and in historical events like the Black Death. As a microcosm of Italian history, especially during the Middle Ages, it's a revealing story, and in addition will allow you to look down your nose at the people at the next table who are reading Frances Mayes.
October 16, 2024
Gorgeous book, full of good information and compellingly written. Full of useful information for specialists, but accessible to the wider public as well. Siena is a charming place, and this book is a wonderful tribute to that, covering its whole history broadly speaking but focused around its most visible medieval aspects and the reasons behind that that continue to today. Highly recommend.
October 31, 2024
I got lost here once. Had no clue I was in a historic sewer (the streets (they didn't have a sewage system (they had to throw their waste into the streets))).
November 13, 2025
I <3 Siena. Fyrri hlutinn skemmtilegur (fram að 15. öld), seinni hlutinn ekki alveg jafn fjörlegur. Stundum hefði mátt sjóða þetta aðeins betur saman og búa til öflugra narratív.
April 12, 2025
This is an excellent reference book covering all aspects of Siena’s history in chronological order. It’s strong on detail which is both helpful but also makes a dense read, so take it slowly. It would benefit from more pictures, and just possibly being arranged by theme rather than chronologically. It’s helpful to have seen the current exhibition on medieval art from Siena at the National Gallery London.
December 13, 2024
This was my first book by Stevenson, and if I'm being honest here, I had never heard of her before. As such, I didn't know what to expect but there aren't that many easy to find books on the subject so I braced myself, and hoped for the best.
As such, I must acknowledge it wasn't bad, not really, my score would be 3,5 but as you know, goodreads does not allow it so, and why is that? The system or the score you might ask? I mean the score, obviously, well... I was hoping for a thorough approach to the city, and the Tuscany but in the end, I got snippets of it intermixed with a lot (and I mean it), of art information that was relevant at times, just not perhaps in such quantity as to stop the narrative altogether nor require full chapters, for that was the case. Centuries merited a couple of sentences while paintings were described in main detail.
In conclusion, I would have liked it more had it focused primarily on the city's rich history rather than its art one.
As such, I must acknowledge it wasn't bad, not really, my score would be 3,5 but as you know, goodreads does not allow it so, and why is that? The system or the score you might ask? I mean the score, obviously, well... I was hoping for a thorough approach to the city, and the Tuscany but in the end, I got snippets of it intermixed with a lot (and I mean it), of art information that was relevant at times, just not perhaps in such quantity as to stop the narrative altogether nor require full chapters, for that was the case. Centuries merited a couple of sentences while paintings were described in main detail.
In conclusion, I would have liked it more had it focused primarily on the city's rich history rather than its art one.
September 25, 2023
A lovely book and a fine introduction to the city and its history and art. The early parts are the most interesting and involving, of course, as this book concentrates on the days when Siena was more or less its own master and produced glorious art. But a thorough and fascinating read.
February 26, 2024
A readable, wide-ranging book that accomplishes what it sets out to do. It is part history, part art history, and part travel writing, and it switches seamlessly between the aims. It's not a work of great literature or even great travel writing but it doesn't aspire to be one. Siena is a beautiful city and one of my favorites that I have visited, and the book deepened my appreciation for it. I've read a dozen or so books subjecting this or that city to a similar treatment and many of them fail for one reason or another - too personal, too pretentious, overemphasis on one topic to the detriment of others - but this one strikes the right notes.
December 30, 2024
3.5⭐️ rounded up
Very comprehensive, though not the most compelling. In fact, at some points the extensiveness of the book began to bore me, because it derived so much from the focus of Siena. Nonetheless, there was some great things in here that I found fascinating and it’s certainly worth a read if you are intrigued by Siena. The way the chapters are structured was convenient (for example there would be certain chapters on art and then a separate chapter on the Palio), in that I could easily access what I was most interested in and skip over what I wasn’t. Plus, it’s in chronological order.
I can’t wait to put all this knowledge to use once I visit Siena soon :)
Very comprehensive, though not the most compelling. In fact, at some points the extensiveness of the book began to bore me, because it derived so much from the focus of Siena. Nonetheless, there was some great things in here that I found fascinating and it’s certainly worth a read if you are intrigued by Siena. The way the chapters are structured was convenient (for example there would be certain chapters on art and then a separate chapter on the Palio), in that I could easily access what I was most interested in and skip over what I wasn’t. Plus, it’s in chronological order.
I can’t wait to put all this knowledge to use once I visit Siena soon :)
March 10, 2024
A good companion to prepare oneself for a visit. Or a memory lane to relive the streets, narrow alleys, gorgeous hills and hundreds (thousands) of years of history.
Styled in a manner of another good book by Mary Holingsworth “The Medici”
Styled in a manner of another good book by Mary Holingsworth “The Medici”
November 8, 2025
I think I’m the wrong audience for this book. If you don’t know anything about the history of Siena I think this will be a perfect introduction. For me, I already know a ton so I didn’t really get anything out of it. However I like how Stevenson writes so I might enjoy her more academic works
August 11, 2023
A beautiful book with lovely pictures. Provides a good background to Sienese history, although I thought rather skated over some key periods.
September 9, 2023
A bit aimless at times and without much of an argument to speak of, but overall a good general introduction to Siena.
September 9, 2024
Excellent. Bought it when I was in Siena and wished I’d read it before I went. Now need to go back again as it really is an authoritative history of a great city.
March 14, 2025
Well written informative and a not too academic read.
November 14, 2025
A nice bit of armchair travelling- I miss Italy!
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews