Our museums

A capillary network that brings together 45 museums in the Siena area.
Scroll

Our little museums – civic, diocesan, university or parts of other institutions – dot the charming villages around Siena, hosting artworks, objects and documents from churches, palazzos, private collections and archeological digs from their nearby vicinities. This is the essence of the “museo diffuso” – the non-traditional museum in direct contact with the places where its collections have their origins, continuously rediscovering the local landscape and identity.

Art

A city of transit and cultural exchange along the Via Francigena, Siena has been a workshop for painters, sculptors and architects of the highest order, to whom the city and its territory owe their current appearance. From the extraordinary gold backgrounds of 13th– and 14th-century painters like Duccio di Buoninsegna, the Lorenzetti brothers and Simone Martini, to Mannerists like Domenico Beccafumi and Il Sodoma, from 19th-century purism to the beguiling sculptures of Marco Romano, Jacopo della Quercia and Francesco di Valdambrino, our museums – often located in magnificently frescoed historic palazzos – conserve masterpieces commissioned for church altars or opulent dwellings, and they document period tastes and the mingling of styles and cultures.

Asciano
Cassioli Museum. Sienese painting from the 19th century

Civic Museum of Archaeology and Sacred Art

Buonconvento
Museum of Sacred Art of the Val d’Arbia

Casole d’Elsa
Civic Archaeological Museum

Castiglione d’Orcia
Sala d’arte San Giovanni and Rocca di Tentennano

Colle di Val d’Elsa
San Pietro Museum

Montalcino
Civic and Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art

Montepulciano
Civic Museum – Pinacoteca Crociani (Crociani Picture Gallery)

Pienza
Palazzo Borgia –
Diocesan Museum

San Gimignano
Church of San Lorenzo in Ponte

Civic Museums and Town Hall

Siena
Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art and the Oratory of San Bernardino

Archeology

From prehistory to the Middle Ages, the traces of ancient civilization are still clearly perceptible in the landscape and toponymy of the area around Siena. Over the centuries, important excavations have led to the “museumization” of unique archeological sites and the myriad of treasures that have sprung from them: the fascinating history of the Etruscans runs from the Chianti to the Val d’Elsa and from the Val di Chiana to the Crete chalk hills and the princely residence at Murlo – a rare example of a living city with archeological finds linked to the cult of water (and wine!) and of the dead (canopic urns and painted tombs). There are also two archeodromes where visitors can take a journey back in time through experimental archeology.

Castellina in Chianti
Archaeological Museum of the Chianti

Cetona
Civic Museum of the Prehistory of Monte Cetona and Belverde Archaeological Natural Park

Chianciano Terme
The Civic Archaeological Museum of the Waters

Chiusi
“The Underground City” Civic Museum

Colle di Val d’Elsa
Archaeological museum “Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli” and Dometaia Archaeological Park

Murlo
Antiquarium of Poggio Civitate Archaeological Museum

Poggibonsi
Archaeodrome

San Gimignano
Santa Chiara Museum

Sarteano
Civic Archaeological Museum

Siena
Prehistory and archaeological collections

Trequanda
Pallavicini Archaeological Collection

Science

There are also numerous science and technology museums that contain prestigious collections and surprising curiosities: from an evocative natural history museum associated with one of the city’s oldest academies; to the collections of the University Museum System, which retrace the history of scientific research in Siena from its dawn to the present day, dealing with everything from botany to geology, from physics to anatomy; to museums that explore the relationship between man, nature and the landscape from an eco-sustainable perspective tied to forms of renewable energy.

Colle Val d’Elsa
Crystal Museum

Monticiano
Museum of Biodiversity

Radicondoli
The “Energies of the Territory” Museum

San Giovanni d’Asso
Truffle Museum of San Giovanni d’Asso and documentation centre

Siena
Natural History Museum – Academy of the Fisiocritici

Botanical Museum

Museum of Earth Sciences

National Museum of the Antarctic “Felice Ippolito”

Museum of Medical Instruments

Collection of instruments of Physics

Astronomical Observatory

Anatomical Museum
“Leonetto Comparini”

Traditions

Villages around Siena represent history and tradition and continue to maintain prestigious artisanal practices and eno-gastronomic customs that have made the area world-famous. Many museums use artworks, photographs, instruments, multi-media displays and emotional/experiential virtual journeys to illustrate local people’s habits and customs and the unique continuity between past and present through stories linked to farm life, mining, folk theater, and local people’s relationship with the woods, the landscape and the city. Others maintain the memory of the horrors of war and racial persecution and the struggle for freedom, stimulating the development of critical historical awareness.

Abbadia San Salvatore
Mining Museum Park

Buonconvento
Museo della Mezzadria Senese (Sharecropping Museum)

Castelnuovo Berardenga
Landscape Museum

Monteriggioni
The walkways along the walls and the “Monteriggioni in Arms” Museum

Monticchiello (Pienza)
TePoTraTos
(Scenes from Traditional Popular Tuscan Theatre)

Orgia (Sovicille)
Ethnographic Museum of the Woods

Petroio (Trequanda)
Museum of Terracotta

Serre di Rapolano
Museum of the Ancient Grancia and of Olive Oil

Siena
Rector’s Palace and Historical Archives

Synagogue and Jewish Museum

The Stanze della Memoria (Rooms of Memory)