Torre del Mangia

Siena's great square, the Piazza del Campo, slopes down like a scallop shell towards a single point, and at that point, beside the Palazzo Pubblico, the Torre del Mangia goes straight up. Built between 1338 and 1348, it is a shaft of dark red brick, strikingly slim for its height of some 87 metres, which ends in a flared cornice of pale stone and a white marble belfry. The top was refined by the painter Lippo Memmi, brother-in-law of Simone Martini, who drew the stone crown with its battlements that breaks the long line of brick — a painter's idea of how a tower should end against a Tuscan sky.

The tower was a political statement as much as a bell tower. It belonged not to the Church but to the commune, the self-governing republic that ruled Siena from the Palazzo Pubblico, and it was built to rise level with the city's cathedral on its hill — a declaration that civic and religious power stood as equals. Its name comes from a far less exalted figure: the first bell-ringer, Giovanni di Balduccio, known as Mangiaguadagni, "the profit-eater", whether for his idleness, his gluttony or his way with money. The biggest of the tower's bells is called the Sunto, after the Assumption of the Virgin; a clock was added to the shaft in 1360.

At the tower's foot stands the Cappella di Piazza, a marble loggia raised in 1352 by citizens who had survived the Black Death, as a vow to the Virgin; its Renaissance vault was added in the 1460s by Antonio Federighi. From there some 400 steps climb inside the walls to the open belfry. The reward is a view straight down into the Campo, where the fan-shaped brick paving and the Fonte Gaia are laid out as on a plan, with the cathedral, the rooftops of the contrade and the rolling countryside beyond.

Getting there

The tower stands on the Piazza del Campo in the heart of Siena's historic centre, a place best explored on foot. The nearest airport is Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR), about 56 km away in a straight line.