It’s blessed with an embarrassment of architectural riches and wrapped up in wonderfully preserved medieval walls that hug the city tightly, an enchantingly compact tangle of sandstone and terracotta perched on a hill overlooking a quintessentially Tuscan landscape of olive groves and vineyards and winding gravel roads.
(And for anyone who can’t make it to Chianti, the National Gallery in London will begin an extensive exhibition, Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350, in March.
And none makes more of a racket than Florence, 50 miles north, famously the birthplace of the Renaissance and home of the Medici, Michelangelo, Giotto and Leonardo da Vinci.
Which is why it’s better to avoid the roped-off processions of the Uffizi and choose Siena for an art lovers’ city break instead.
A major new exhibition at the National Gallery puts the spotlight on the Tuscan town’s artistic heritage.
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