Violence and beauty combine in Siena

Siena, the jewel of Tuscan cities, was the mercantile and banking centre of medieval Europe. Bankers in Pre-Renaissance Siena preened themselves on their wealth and material possession. Banking (from the Italian banco, ‘counter’) is an Italian invention. Yet Dante consigned money-lenders to the seventh circle of Hell, where they are made to stare for eternity at their sacks of lucre. (Emblazoned with fancy coats of arms, the sacks would have held the equivalent of today’s venture capitalist bonus payments.) Usury was a dangerous professional game in Siena, one which invited church censure as well as personal spiritual dereliction.

But without its money-making eminenti, Siena would have remained a provincial backwater, swampy with the threat of malaria. The city’s wealth showed above all in its formidable ring of fortress-like towers, 15 of which still stand. Some 80 of these towers rose over the medieval houses, and were used for offence or defence, when the faction fights raged with neighbouring Florence or among the Sienese banker families.