Il Palazzo San Niccolò

Close to the city walls of Siena, west of Porta Romana, Palazzo San Niccolò stands in an area with centuries of complex building history dating back to 1346, when Pope Clement VI approved the foundation of the convent of San Niccolò. Although the archives were lost in a fire in 1560, the transformations of the convent can be reconstructed through pastoral visits, expense reports and rare images. Suppressed during the Napoleonic era, the monastery was converted into a hospital in 1818 and then into a mental asylum, undergoing continuous expansion until the demolition of the ancient complex. In 1866, Francesco Azzurri designed a modern pavilion complex, completed in 1890, with Palazzo San Niccolò as its central building. The mental hospital closed permanently in 1999, and the area is now a university campus, the result of a conversion project by Enzo Zacchiroli. Based on unpublished documentation, this volume reconstructs the entire building history of the site.