New Practical Guide of Siena [antikvár]

The She-wolf, by Giovanni di Turino (Palazzo Pubblico). HISTORICAL NOTES Siena was founded in the reign of Octavian Augustus, by the Romans, who built a military colony CSaena JuliaJ on the site of a preexisting Etruscan and perhaps Gaulish (the Saenones) settlement. The Roman origins of the town explain the heraldic charge the Medieval town chose for itself (the She-wolf feeding Romulus and Remus), which, together with the argent and sable coat divided per fess (la Balzana) were used by the town as its arms. Roman Siena was never very important, chiefly because it did not lie on any of the main consular roads (Aurelia and Cassia), which originally wound along the coast and along the Chiana Valley. For the same reasons, Christianity only reached Sienese territory towards the beginnings of the IVth cent. After the first Barbarian invasions had swept through Italy and after the Byzantine-Gothic war, Siena became part of the Longobard dominions. The Longobards settled in Siena and promoted the expansion of the Sienese territory to the detriment of nearby Arezzo. The road network shifted its axis and the Aurelia and the Cassia, which drove through areas exposed to the Byzantine inroads, were gradually abandoned to the advantage of the Via Francigena, that linked the Northern Longobard possessions with Rome, passing through Siena. In 774, the Longobards were conquered by Charlemagne and Siena was overrun by Frankish administrators, who married into the Longobard families, originating the oldest aristocratic families in Siena and founding abbeys and castles all over the Sienese territory. Feudal power gradually decreased and at the death of the Countess Matilda (1115), the Mark of Tuscia, which under the Canossa family (Matilda's) included most of Tuscany as it is today, broke up into a series of burgeoning communal structures. The Commune of Siena, with its 3