Continuing along the via Roma, past a splendid shrine by Giovanni di Stefano on the right with its escutcheon of the monks of San Galgano, and Peruzzio's façade of the church of the Monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli – now a business headquarters – a visitor arrives at the last two buildings on the street.
One is the complex of the Società di Esecutori di Pie Disposizioni, with its two small museums housing crucifixes of the Duccio school and a Madonna with Infant Jesus and Saints by Lippo Vanni. The other, at one time the headquarters of the ancient convent of San Nicolò, was a psychiatric hospital but is no longer.
View from via Roma
At the end of the via Roma is the Porta Romana, the most imposing Sienese gateway. It was completed in 1330 to replace the old Porta S. Martino. The gateway, with its great wall, is decorated above the corbels with two stone she-wolves, attributed to Giovanni di Stefano. Below the arch of the façade are the remains of the Incoronazione della Vergine – Crowning of the Virgin Mary – worked on by Taddeo di Bartolo and il Sassetta. From this entrance, important because it linked the city to Rome and thus to the Papacy, is a splendid panorama of the Sienese countryside.
View from outside the city walls
Comune di Siena 2010 - accessible version -
