Siena

Siena was founded as a Roman colony in the time of the Emperor Augustus and took the name of Saena Iulia. Within the historic centre of Siena, sites from the Etruscan era have been found, which could suggest that the city was founded by the Etruscans. The first known document in which the Sienese community is mentioned dates to 70 and bears the signature of Tacitus who, in the fourth book of his Historiae, reports the following episode: the senator Manlius Patruitus reported to Rome that he had been beaten and ridiculed with a mock funeral during his official visit to Saena Iulia, a small military colony of Tuscia. The Roman Senate decided to punish the chief culprits and to sternly call on the Sienese to show greater respect for authority. From the early Middle Ages there are no documents that can shed light on the fortunes of civic life in Siena.

There is some news concerning the establishment of the bishopric and the diocese, especially regarding the disputes that arose between the Bishop of Siena and the Bishop of Arezzo over the boundaries of each one's jurisdiction: disputes in which the Lombard king Liutprand intervened, pronouncing a ruling in favour of the Arezzo diocese. But the Sienese were not satisfied and therefore in the year 853, when Italy passed from Lombard to Frankish rule, they managed to obtain the annulment of the ruling issued by King Liutprand. It seems, then, that in Lombard times Siena was governed by a gastald, a representative of the king: a gastald who was later replaced by an imperial Count after the coronation of Charlemagne. The first count of whom there is concrete record was Winigi, son of Ranieri, in 867.

After 900 the emperor Louis III reigned in Siena, though his reign did not last very long, since in 903 the chronicles tell of a return of the counts to power under the new rule of King Berengar. The historic centre of Siena Siena finds itself in the 10th century at the centre of important trade routes leading to Rome and, thanks to this, became an important medieval city. In the 12th century the city equipped itself with communal institutions of the consular type, began to expand its territory and formed its first alliances. This position of both political and economic importance led Siena to fight for the northern dominions of Tuscany, against Florence.

From the first half of the 12th century onwards Siena prospered and became an important commercial centre, maintaining good relations with the Papal State; Sienese bankers were a point of reference for the authorities of Rome, who turned to them for loans or financing. At the end of the 12th century Siena, supporting the Ghibelline cause (even though Guelph families were not lacking among the Sienese, in tune with Florence), found itself once again against Florence: famous is the victory over the Florentines at the battle of Montaperti, in 1260, celebrated also by Dante Alighieri. But a few years later the Sienese fared worse at the battle of Colle Val d'Elsa, in 1269, which led in time, in 1287, to the rise of the Government of the Nine, of the Guelph faction. Under this new government, Siena reached its greatest splendour, both economic and cultural.

After the plague of 1348, the slow decline of the Republic of Siena began, which nevertheless did not close the way to Sienese territorial expansion, which until the day of the Republic's fall comprised a third of Tuscany. The end of the Sienese Republic, perhaps the only Western state to implement a pure democracy in favour of the people, came on 25 April 1555, when the city, after a siege of more than a year, had to surrender, worn out by hunger, to the empire of Charles V, backed by the Florentines, who ceded the territory of the Republic as a fief to the Medici, Lords of Florence, to repay them for the expenses incurred during the war. For the umpteenth time the Sienese citizens managed to stand up to an emperor, who only thanks to his immeasurable resources was able to bend the proud resistance of this small Republic and its citizens.

After the fall of the Republic a few Sienese, led moreover by the Florentine exile Piero Strozzi, not wishing to accept the fall of the Republic, took refuge in Montalcino, creating the Republic of Siena sheltered in Montalcino, maintaining the alliance with France, which continued to exercise its power over the southern part of the Republic's territory, creating considerable problems for the troops of the hated Florentines. It lived until 31 May 1559, when it was betrayed by its French allies, whom Siena had always supported, who, concluding the peace of Cateau-Cambresis with the emperor Charles V, in effect ceded the Republic to the hated Florentines.