---
node: spot_siena_piazza_del_campo
type: spot
slug: piazza_del_campo
destination: dest_siena
title: "Piazza del Campo"
lead: "The Campo is a shell-shaped square sloping to the Palazzo Pubblico, paved in brick and divided by stone into nine sections for the Nine who governed medieval Siena. Twice a summer it becomes a racecourse."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_siena_piazza_del_campo.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Il_campo_view_from_torre.jpg"
image_author: "Mark Sehnert"
image_license: "Public domain"
---

## Overview

The square sits on the meeting point of the city's three hills and was market ground before it was civic space. The Palio, run on 2 July and 16 August, packs the centre with tens of thousands of people while ten horses ridden bareback take three laps around a track of packed earth laid over the brick, and the race lasts around ninety seconds. The rest of the year the slope is where the whole city sits in the afternoon.

## Highlights

Sit on the brick with everyone else rather than at a café table; the Campo is designed to be sat on. The Fonte Gaia at the top is a nineteenth-century copy — Jacopo della Quercia's original panels are in the Santa Maria della Scala museum opposite the cathedral. For the Palio, the centre is free but you must be in place hours early and cannot leave.