Introduction

As a distinct place, Siena is most overtly delineated in its built environment: its undulating terrain, narrow winding streets, imposing palaces and abundance of terracotta brick (Figure 5.1). In the early modern period, Siena's infrastructure was also essential to making it a singular place. Within the city, this included the impressive fountains, the fabled bottini, the brick paved streets and piazzas, and the extensive network of subterranean workshops and storage areas. Outside of the city, in the contado, the landholdings and production that took place in the granges, mills, quarries and kilns were equally fundamental to the life of Siena. The building industry was thus a leading protagonist in the history of early modern Siena, and instrumental within this was the city's great welfare institution: the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala.

This article examines the role of the Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala in the development of early modern Siena as a place: in the realization of its architecture and infrastructure, and in the perpetuation of a distinctly Sienese corpus of technical building knowledge. The Santa Maria della Scala was a, if not the, primary force in the development and maintenance of Siena's iconic tradition of early modern technical design, which as exhibited in numerous anonymous copybooks, as well as the notebooks of Jacopo Mariano Taccola and Francesco di Giorgio, encompassed machine design, hydraulic infrastructure, armament production and fortification architecture.