Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena
Masterpieces by Sienese masters of the 14th and 15th centuries
Information
Building easily accessible thanks to an elevator that brings to the floors, also with stairlifts.
Opening hours:
Monday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday (1st, 3rd and 5th of the month) and midweek holidays 8.30-13.30;
Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday 14.00-19.00 (the ticket office closes half an hour earlier)
Closed: 2nd and 4th Sunday of the month; January 1st and December 25th.
Saturday, Sunday and midweek holidays reservations required at 0577 281161.
For access groups of max. 10 people including the guide (equipped with “earphones / whispers”) always respecting the safety distance, for a maximum of 40 visitors at the same time.
Tickets: € 8.00 (full), € 2.00 (reduced). Reductions and free admission according to the law provided for state museums.
Tel. +39 0577 281161
Siena’s National Art Gallery is one of the most important museums in Italy, above all for its collection of paintings from the city’s “golden age” in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. You can trace the development of great Sienese art through the Museum, from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth, from Duccio di Buoninsegna to Ambrogio Lorenzetti, from Simone Martini to Sassetta, from Francesco di Giorgio to Matteo di Giovanni through to Sodoma and Beccafumi, in an almost-complete chronological line. The Museum was founded in the Buonsignori and Brigidi Palaces in 1932 following the scientific system of Cesare Brandi, who published its catalogue in 1933.
The original nucleus of the gallery came from the passion and work of two erudite Sienese, Abbots Giuseppe Ciaccheri and Luigi de Angelis, who collected paintings between 1750 and 1810 by the most significant Sienese artists. This nucleus was augmented and reorganised during the nineteenth century, with the significant additions of the Spannocchi Collection and paintings from the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala. Your visit to the Museum starts on the second floor, where paintings dating from the beginnings of Sienese painting until the second half of the fifteenth century are hung: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti (fourteenth century), and Sano di Pietro, Giovanni di Paolo, Sassetta, Matteo di Giovanni and Francesco di Giorgio (fifteenth century), to mention only the most famous. The first floor has works from the sixteenth century, including paintings by Sodoma and Beccafumi, the most important exponents of Sienese Mannerism. A new exhibition shows the collection of works by Sienese artists active between the end of the 1500s and the following century (Francesco Vanni, Alessandro Casolari, Rutilio Manetti, Bernardino Mei).
The third floor houses the Spannocchi-Piccolomini Collection, gifted to the city by the eponymous Sienese family in 1835. Paintings from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by northern Italian, Flemish, German and Dutch artists are on show; among the most important are those by Albrecht Durer and Lorenzo Lotto. The gallery of stone sculptures also gives visitors an impressive view of Siena’s roofscape.