The Pellegrinaio
Frescoes of the sick being received and foundlings raised.
Jastrow โ Public domain ยท bradhostetler โ CC BY 2.0 ยท Zairon โ CC BY 4.0 ยท Warja Lavater โ Public domain
**One of Europe's oldest hospitals โ it worked for a thousand years and is now a museum** โ directly facing the cathedral. It began as a **shelter for pilgrims** on the **Via Francigena** โ the pilgrimage road from Canterbury to Rome, on which Siena was a principal stage โ **then became a hospital and orphanage** and one of the city's richest institutions. **It went on working as a hospital until the 1980s.** โ **Its great room is the Pellegrinaio**: **15th-century frescoes depicting the hospital's own work** โ receiving the sick, feeding the poor, raising foundlings, distributing alms. โ **These are secular scenes of daily life**, very rare in the art of that period. โ **The building is a labyrinth on several levels** descending into the hill, **with an archaeological museum in its cellars** and **the original Fonte Gaia**.
Frescoes of the sick being received and foundlings raised.
The original sculpture of which the Campo's is a copy.
A museum in the lower levels inside the hill.
Piazza del Duomo 1, 53100 Siena, Italy
**The pilgrim road from England to Rome โ it passed through Siena and made its fortune.** โ **What it is**: the **Via Francigena** (ยซthe road of the Franksยป) is a pilgrimage route more than a thousand years old running from **Canterbury in England** through France, Switzerland and the Alps **to Rome** โ **and Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury documented it in 990** in the diary of his journey, so its course is precisely known. โ **Why it mattered**: **before railways and modern roads, pilgrimage was a mass movement of people** โ thousands crossing Europe on foot each year. **And every pilgrim needed a bed, food, treatment and money changed.** **The towns on the road grew rich on its traffic.** โ **Siena was a principal stage**: **this hospital was built to serve the pilgrims**, **and Sienese banking grew up** to change currency and lend to travellers โ **producing Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (1472), the oldest bank still operating in the world**. โ **This explains the city's wealth**, its palaces and its overreaching cathedral. โ **It also explains its collapse**: when **trade routes shifted** and plague struck, **the artery it lived on withered**. โ **Today the road is a waymarked long-distance walk** done in stages.
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