Tuesday, March 22, 2011 (Part 2)Immediately next door to Il Torre del Mangia is the Palazzo Publico, or City Hall. Inside the Palazzo Publico is a series of well preserved meetings rooms from medieval times. These rooms are covered on the walls and ceilings with frescoes, and they are beautiful. Sadly, we were prohibited from taking any photos. Also sadly, they had no good books in the souvenir shop that contained a good set of photos of the frescoes.
Most of these frescoes are amazingly well preserved. Some are not. For those that are, the colors are incredibly bright and vibrant.
And although a number of these frescoes have the usual religious themes, many of them are historical and allegorical, and that makes them a bit more unique and interesting. One of the most well known frescoes is of a heavily armored Sienese soldier traveling on horseback across the Sienese countryside. In another room, there is a series of frescoes depicting life under the rule of a "good" king (on one wall) and life under the rule of a "bad" king (on the opposing wall). Each kind presides over a respectively blessed and troubled community. There were also frescoes of very detailed battle scenes. We were delighted by these pictures and we were very glad that we had made the extra effort to see them.
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