Located on the ancient Via Francigena, the Santa Maria della Scala, located in front of the Duomo, it is an ancient hospital now mutated into a huge museum complex. The origins of the building are uncertain although the first known document dates back to 29 March 1090 but, this is an act of donation, its foundation should be even older. The hospital has maintained its original function until 1995, when it was decided to recover the local by transforming the gigantic structure, the size of most urban and architectural, in a modern museum complex container of events.
The most important and valuable room of the Santa Maria della Scala is undoubtedly the Sala del Pellegrinaio (Hall of the Pilgrims), so called because ancient pilgrims’ shelter. The interest of this fourteenth-century hall is due to a large cycle of frescoes commissioned by Giovanni Buzzichelli, rector of the Hospital until his death (1444). The wall paintings, made between 1441 and 1444, are due to hand three Sienese artists such as Domenico Vecchietta, Domenico di Bartolo and Priamo della Quercia. The last span to the window was added between 1575-1577 by mediocre Florentine painters Pietro d’Achille Crogi and Giovanni Navesi.
Downstairs there are also some places of great value: the Corticella, the Oratory of Saint Catherine of the Night, the Treasure of Santa Maria della Scala and especially the Old Barn. The latter is important because it houses the original pieces of the Fonte Gaia, a masterpiece of sculpture of the fifteenth century destined to Piazza del Campo, built between 1409 and 1419 by Jacopo della Quercia.
Corticella descend from the so-called “maze” which since 1993 houses the National Archaeological Museum, made at the behest of the famous archaeologist Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, with finds from excavations in the province of Siena.
Credits: http://www.scopriresiena.it/complesso-museale-santa-maria-della-scala/
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