Villa il Pavone, one of the less known places of Siena
It was held in 2016 a guided tour to discover the lesser-known places of Sienese history and art took place. Now in its third consecutive year, “Turisti per casa” is an initiative organised by the Federagit Guides of Siena and each year the visits are dedicated to a different theme. After a series of visits to the National Art Gallery and the Churches of the mendicant orders, the theme this year focuses on private buildings, sometimes custodians of great treasures of art and culture.
Yesterday morning’s guided tour took place at the Villa called “Il Pavone” and has already seen a large number of people interested in getting to know or rediscovering one of the most evocative places in the city of Siena.
Agostino Fantastici, an eclectic architect
Commissioned by Mario Bianchi Bandinelli, a member of one of the richest families in the city between the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Villa was built a few steps from the great Porta Romana and to replace a fifteenth-century building; it was Agostino Fantastici the architect who oversaw the construction of both the building and the garden in front of the villa.
During yesterday morning’s guided tour we went to discover the “secrets” hidden behind the villa complex, focusing on the Egyptian symbols present both inside and outside the building, such as the sphinxes and the large stone pyramid, all elements refer to the client’s membership of Freemasonry.
The itinerary ended inside the villa, with a visit to the rooms and study, a place of “spiritual” regeneration for a client who had favoured a type of secluded life, withdrawn from the world, a choice that is underlined both by the location of the villa – which was once totally surrounded by greenery and not exposed to the noise of the current road traffic on Via Piccolomini – and both by the internal decoration, which reflects the essentiality that was typical of the “neoclassicist” style marked by the Fantastic architect to the whole complex ⟢
