SIENA, a medieval and Renaissance city perched on a hill, surrounded by the red earth that, when burned, turns the deep warm orange that is in every child's pocket paintbox, has changed little in my lifetime. Indeed, not much has happened there since it lost its sturdy republican independence five centuries ago and was subsequently absorbed into the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
English Grand Tourists went there in great numbers in the 18th century, at last to learn Italian (they had spoken only French in Turin and English in Florence), for it was widely believed that the Sienese spoke in accents exquisitely refined; many
learned something of sexual manners too, finding that "a few lessons from a female instructor made a far stronger impression than a thousand learned lessons from a male".
We should visit this ancient seat of democracy where there was never a princely court, the nobility were unostentatious and a populace renowned for its sense of equality and independence shared in the city's government, precisely because not only is it physically unchanged from the years when it was a power in the land of Italy, but because everywhere in the winding narrow streets and alleys that so often become steeper flights of steps, in the evening passeggio when the young come out to play, the old to parade their worldly substance and all the dogs empty their bowels, and in the scrupulous care lavished on its ancient monuments, we find evidence of an inherited collective memory.
Of this, the most celebrated manifestation is the Palio, the callous race of horses around the Piazza del Campo, the fan-shaped amphitheatre that is the secular heart of Siena. An event of medieval pageantry, it takes place on 2 July and 16 August. As it results in the falls and deaths of horses (the riders be damned) I have no wish to see it, but as there is an old Sienese saying "the Palio lasts all year", this terrible phenomenon must be acknowledged as a rite that, like the bullfights of the Spaniards, constantly reasserts the Sienese identity.
There are other metaphors of continuity as ancient. In the Palazzo Pubblico the frescos of good government and bad, the earliest of political propaganda paintings and the earliest of observed landscapes, date from the halcyon 1330s, just before the city's prosperity was blighted for ever by the Black Death.
On the highest point of Siena's disconcertingly steep hill lies the cathedral, a glorious gothic zebra of a building striped in black and white, embellished with barley-sugar columns; there was once a plan to quadruple its size but this proved as futile an ambition as the Tower of Babel, and its grandiose ruins are a reminder of pride's fall.
In the Cathedral Museum, Duccio's great homage to the Virgin Mary, the city's guardian, the altarpiece Maesta, or Majesty, is permanently on view, one of the greatest paintings from the early Italian Renaissance, dating from early in the 14th century. In all these you have the essential Siena, a city that was as glorious as any in Italy seven centuries ago, but which never recovered from the economic effects of the Black Death.
There were some pretty painters in the 15th century and some even attempted to be grand – witness the brilliantly colourful frescos in the cathedral's Piccolomini Library and the west front of the old Santa Maria della Scala hospital – and in the 16th century there was an exciting but brief flicker, that of the High Renaissance in Beccafumi's ceiling for the Sala del Concistoro in the Palazzo Pubblico, but after this there was only oblivion.
The National Gallery of Siena (Pinacoteca Nazionale) must not be missed, its masterpieces cheek by jowl with the accidents of rack, ruin and survival. In the cathedral there are sculptures attributed to Michelangelo and Bernini (in the authenticity of which I do not believe), but Nicola Pisano's marble pulpit of 1269 is a marvel of the age, and in the baptistry font Donatello's bronze relief of John the Baptist's death is worth a day's march.
Do not visit the Palazzo Chigi unless you are a glutton for punishment – it is what can only be described as an old queen's collection and far better old masters can be found any day of the week in Christie's and Sotheby's.
Intellectually and aesthetically Siena offers a feast, but food in her restaurants – cooked to death and as salty as the Dead Sea, rosemary the overwhelming flavour of all meat, potatoes soggy and green vegetables a mush – is pretty disgusting, confirming the opinion of my barber that no Italian north of Naples knows how to cook. How is it that one can be given ruined pork, beef and boar in every restaurant?
For the first time in decades I stayed at a rather grand hotel – the Grand, indeed – where dinner, though international in its ambition, was beyond such criticism; a simple Continental breakfast there, however, was ludicrously expensive and my undying habits of economy drove me to a nearby bar for coffee and a fresh ham roll instead.
Factfile SienaHow to get thereFlights from Scotland to Florence start from £148 from Edinburgh and £166 from Aberdeen, both with
www.travelocity.co.ukWhere to StayGrand Hotel Continental, Via Banchi di Sopra 85, Siena, Italy, tel: 00 39 0577 56011,
www.lhw.com Doubles from e378 (£300).
And There's MoreScotsman Reader Holidays offers alternative trips to Italy. Tel: 0131-620 8400 or visit
www.holidays.scotsman.com