---
node: spot_siena_palazzo_pubblico_siena
type: spot
slug: palazzo_pubblico_siena
destination: dest_siena
title: "Palazzo Pubblico"
lead: "The Palazzo Pubblico has been Siena's town hall since 1310 and still is. Inside, Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good and Bad Government covers three walls of the council chamber."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_siena_palazzo_pubblico_siena.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:552SienaPalPubblico.JPG"
image_author: "MarkusMark"
image_license: "Public domain"
---

## Overview

The frescoes were painted between 1338 and 1339 for the room where the Nine met, and they are a political argument rather than a decoration: on one wall a well-governed city and countryside, prosperous and at work; on the other, tyranny, with the fields burnt and the streets empty. They are the earliest surviving landscape painting in western art of a real, identifiable place. The rest of the building is the civic museum, with Simone Martini's Maestà in the next room.

## Highlights

Give the Sala dei Nove twenty minutes and read the bad government wall as carefully as the good one, though it is the more damaged. Simone Martini's Maestà of 1315 is in the adjoining hall and is the other reason to come. The ticket is separate from the Torre del Mangia; a combined one costs slightly less.