The city square is its set piece for the visitor. Polished and scrubbed; the parlour that’s only used on high days and holidays. The grandest of buildings, fine statuary and fountains accompanied by pavement cafes offering you the opportunity to linger a while. The city square is often frozen in the city’s heyday – when the coffers were full and money could be spent on civic projects. And if the locals still love the square and share it with the tourists then it truly becomes the heart of the city. That is so clearly the case in Siena.
The medieval centre of Siena is a jumble of narrow alleys that plunge steeply this way and that. The wider alleys, or main thoroughfares in Siennese terms, meander their way towards the Campo but by nothing approaching a direct route. This prevents you getting any sort of impression of the approaching piazza until, coming from the north; you stumble down the steep flights of steps and virtually fall into it. And it is nothing like any piazza I have ever seen. It is essentially fan shaped with the focus sitting at the lowest point of quite a steep slope, in front of the city’s Palazzo Public and mighty, 97 metre bell tower. The curve facing the palace is largely lined with cafes and restaurants, all doing a roaring trade.
The space is marvellous. The piazza remains largely bare. People sit and lay around absorbing the sunshine and passing the time of day. The only feature is the square marble Fonte Gaia, which, to me, looks misplaced with its renaissance froth sticking out like a sore thumb in its relatively simple surroundings.
During our day and night in Siena we kept returning to the Campo partly because the roads tend to wind towards there and partly because it is one of the few places where you can be certain where you are. Each time we lingered; the colours, the architecture, the cold beer all contributed.
The Campo has been the scene of many a grand civic event – it forms a natural amphitheatre and has a dramatic, theatrical quality about it – from bullfights to preaching and executions to elections. It is also the venue for the spectacular festival that is the Palio. Crazy parades and mediaeval costumes abound twice yearly in the run up to an incredibly fast horse race around the edge of the Campo. We were visiting at the wrong time of year (that would have taken far too much planning!) but we did witness the minor silliness of a contrada parade with stupid costumes and slightly tipsy bad behaviour the order of the day.
The Campo is simply magnificent.