"per queste cose ognuno sta in santa pace et in concordia”: Understanding urban space in Renaissance Siena

Abstract

This chapter offers a longue durée history of Siena’s urban development from the fourteenth century through to the early years of Medici domination (c. 1300-1600). As is well known, Siena offers a precocious example of urban design legislation around the piazza del Campo, which included paving, zoning rules, and rulings on the aesthetics of buildings facing onto the piazza. Such planning rules spread to encompass much of the city fabric through the fifteenth century, so that when the Medici took over the city, there is evidence of their surprise at the way urban improvement was enshrined as a core civic duty. While a focus of the chapter will look at urban planning legislation and its effects on the evolving built fabric over nearly three centuries, it will also consider how public urban space was used. Here too, there are continuities in the ritual practices that activated and inscribed meaning on the squares and streets as well as religious and secular buildings and monuments. It will be shown then that, as Bernardino da Siena’s commentary on Lorenzetti’s famous frescoes show, the built city is integral to the social interactions of its citizens.