Top 10 Florence and Tuscany

Siena

Siena offers the sunny disposition of a Gothic brick-built hill town to contrast with Florence’s stately Renaissance marble. As a thriving medieval merchant and textile town, Siena produced a colourful, courtly Gothic school of painting as well as a building boom, but it all came to a crashing halt when the Black Death of 1348 decimated the population. Florence would forever dominate the Tuscan scene thereafter, but luckily for visitors this means that, aside from a few Baroque church façades, second-fiddle Siena didn’t have the funds to overhaul its Middle Ages look.

1. Palazzo Pubblico

Siena’s medieval town hall is a genteel brick palace. ...