Siennese

Titled The Battle of San Romano, it represented the victory of the Florentine forces over the Siennese army at the time when the whole of Italy was still divided into warring city states.

The Fonteverde Tuscan Resort & Spa, set in the rolling Siennese hills in San Casciano dei Bagni, won a prestigious 2012 World Travel Award for "Italy's Leading Spa Resort." A 17th-century grand resort built by a member of the Medici family (don't worry, it's been updated several times since), it's renowned for the rejuvenating power of its thermal spring waters.

Designed by the English architect Cecil Pinsent, this large Renaissance garden slowly winds uphill via an exotic sequence of green enclosures, counting off citrus shrubs, herbs, cherry trees and vines, lawns, fountains, wildflowers, cypress lanes, wisteria-covered pergola, Siennese travertine steps and even a cemetery.

The Siennese acknowledged Teddy as one of their own, so when word got out only days before his death, people flocked from the city to pay their respects to a man they admired for his wisdom, humanity and his sense of fun.

'Romans buy the pottery of Rome, Florentine goes to Florence and Siena works for the Siennese '--a perfect example of what the Italians call Campanilismo--literally 'loyalty to the church tower'.

Presented by Sunand Prasad, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the RIBA Sir Nikolaus Pevsner International Book Award for Architecture went to Fabrizio Nevola, for his book, Siena, Constructing the Renaissance City; the first book to focus on Siennese architectural and urban history during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

The Italian government quite likes the idea (of betting, that is, not civil war) but the Siennese are going bananas, even though the Palio is a race ideal for punting.

And if the Commedia devotes just a few lines to this character, by contrast, contemporary chroniclers recorded how Nello della Pietra had married the Siennese Madonna Pia, reputed to be one of the most beautiful women in Tuscany, and then removed her to the malaria-infested coastal district of the Maremma where she died, leaving him free to marry another noblewoman.

Two pictures painted in a Siennese workshop more than 670 years ago have finally come together for the first time in a Birmingham gallery.

He appears four times in the painting, much in the way Saint Bernardino makes multiple appearances in a Siennese panel, marking the progress of a miracle--hearing the prayer, performing the resuscitation, receiving thanks.