Piazza del Campo is the main public space of the historic center of Siena, a city in Tuscany, Italy. Its name comes from the Italian word campanilismo, which translates to "local pride" and campanile "bell tower." The campo is regarded as one of Europe's greatest medieval squares. It is renowned worldwide for its beauty and architectural integrity. The Palazzo Pubblico and its Torre del Mangia, as well as various palazzi signorili, surround the scallop shell-shaped piazza. At the northwest edge is the Fonte Gaia.
The twice-a-year horse race, Palio di Siena, is held around the edges of the piazza. The piazza is also the finish location of the annual road cycling race Strade Bianche.
The Campo is located within the Historic Centre of Siena, which was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995 for its exceptional preservation of medieval city planning and architectural coherence.
History
thumb|left|250px|Gores of brick paving laid out to resemble a shell, viewed from the [[Torre del Mangia]]
The open site was established before the thirteenth century on a sloping site near the meeting point of the three hillside communities that coalesced to form Siena: the Castellare, the San Martino, and the Camollia. It became a social gathering for communities; they established a marketplace and site for activities such as games, fights, and races. Siena may have had earlier Etruscan settlements, but they were not considerable Roman settlements, and the campo does not lie on the site of a Roman forum, as is sometimes suggested. During the Middle Ages, Siena was a wealthy self-governing city-state in competition with its neighbor Florence. Taxes were collected to start funding the long construction of a city hall. By 1169, the Piazza del Campo was organized to be constructed. In 1260, the Sienese and papal ally Florence came into conflict at the Battle of Montaperti. Florence was defeated. Due to Florence's loss, Siena became excommunicated, impacting much of Siena's wealth and trade. Peace was restored in 1270, and civic pride became important to the Sienese culture and motivated the use of public space as a civic statement. The campo was and remains, the focal point of public life in the city.
Architecture and landscape
The palazzi signorili that lined the square housed the families of those who dominated city governance at the time the PIazza del Campo was built, such as the Sansedoni, the Piccolomini, and the Saracini. Their homes have unified rooflines, deliberately built to demonstrate a sense of decorum in contrast to earlier high tower houses — seen as emblems of communal strife — such as may still be seen not far from Siena at San Gimignano. In the statutes of Siena, civic and architectural decorum was ordered: "...it responds to the beauty of the city of Siena and to the satisfaction of almost all people of the same city that any edifices that are to be made anew anywhere along the public thoroughfares... proceed in line with the existent buildings and one building not stand out beyond another, but they shall be disposed and arranged equally so as to be of the greatest beauty for the city." The unity of these Late Gothic houses is affected in part by the uniformity of the bricks of which their walls are built: brick-making was a monopoly of the commune, which saw to it that standards were maintained. The piazza slopes down to the Piazza Publicco and that slope falls about 15 feet from the North to the South side. Materials and colors are varied, but the campo is mostly made of brick and stucco in warm colors. The bright brick pavement is harmonizing, and it's designed to provide a feeling of openness and welcome. The curved shape of the streets and the campo are the results of the city's topography but also serve practical benefits. The white marble Fonte Gaia was originally designed and built by Jacopo della Quercia, whose bas-reliefs from the basin's sides are conserved in the Ospedale di St. Maria della Scala in Piazza Duomo. The original sculptures of goddesses featured on the 1419 fountain were replaced in 1866 <!--Krautheimer's date is 1866--> by free copies by Tito Sarrocchi, who omitted Jacopo della Quercia's two nude statues of Rhea Silvia and Acca Larentia that the nineteenth-century city fathers found too pagan or too nude. When they had been set up in 1419, Jacopo della Quercia's nude figures were the first two female nudes, who were neither Eve nor a repentant saint, to stand in a public place since Antiquity.