Siena beyond the Campo: a saint's head, a fortress and a city full of students

These four places stand outside the usual Siena plan, all in and around the Fontebranda valley except the last, which is spread across the whole city: the head of St Catherine in San Domenico, her birth house turned into a shrine, the fortress Florence built to keep an eye on Siena, and a university more than six centuries old, whose students make up a third of the population.

Catherine Benincasa, a dyer's daughter from Fontebranda, died in Rome in 1380. Three years later her confessor Raymond of Capua secretly removed her head and thumb and carried them to Siena — without permission, since no one was meant to divide a body after death. The city built a chapel for the relics in the church of San Domenico, where they still stand, behind a grille and beside a fresco by Sodoma. Catherine was not canonised until 1461, eighty-one years after her death, by Pope Pius II — the same Pius the Piccolomini Library in the Duomo is named after.

Entry to the church is free, every day. The basilica stands on the edge of Terzo di Camollia, above the Fontebranda valley.

1 dayWhere this fits if added to a plan already set:Siena in 1 day →

2. Casa di Santa Caterina: the house the city bought back

A few steps down in the same valley stands the house where Catherine was born and lived. After her canonisation in 1461, the people of Fontebranda asked for it to stay open to pilgrims, and the city bought it in 1466. A confraternity dedicated to the saint kept adding chapels and artworks over the following centuries, until the house became a proper shrine — the rooms are still recognisably a home, not a museum.

Entry is free; the shrine opens in the morning and again in the early evening, with a break in the middle of the day.

When to goWhen the Fontebranda valley is quietest to visit:The best time to visit Siena →

After the fall of the Republic of Siena, Duke Cosimo I de' Medici ordered a fortress built in 1561 on the site of an earlier citadel from 1548, to stop any new attempt at Sienese independence — guarding the city from itself, not from an outside enemy. The architect Baldassarre Lanci had it finished by 1563: a square fort with four pentagonal bastions, each carrying the Medici coat of arms in travertine, about 1,500 metres around. It has been a public park since 1937: avenues along the top of the walls, benches, and a view over the city and the hills around it, with no ticket and no opening hours.

The Siena Studio was founded in 1240, when the city government taxed room rentals to students who had arrived from Bologna, to pay the teachers' salaries — making it Italy's first publicly funded university. Emperor Frederick II confirmed the charter in 1248, Pope Innocent IV in 1252. Today the university has about 16,000 students in a city of roughly fifty thousand people, so outside the Palio and the tourist crowds Siena feels like a student town — with no single campus, since the faculties are spread through palazzi across all three terzi.

Day tripsIf a day is left over after these four stops:Day trips from Siena →

Where to stayWhich terzo sits closest to these four:Where to stay in Siena →