Piazza del Campo, Siena, Italy 12 May 2016

Posted on 12 May 2016

Piazza del Campo, Siena, Italy

About this photo

Siena’s main square is famous as the site of the annual Palio horse races. Its paved surface is divided into nine segments, commemorating the ‘Noveschi’ (Council of Nine) that governed Siena from the mid-13^th to the 14^th century.

To learn more about Siena's historical sights, read our Tuscany Travel Guide or visit our online shop to purchase a copy of Insight Guides: Tuscany.

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5.0 average customer rating

Our trip to Northern Italy was very good. Our local Rough Guides expert provided us with an itinerary and patiently worked with us to make the changes we requested. In hindsight, some of her original ideas were better than our requested changes. For example, our visit to Milan completely surprised us, and we wished he could have had another day there. Of course, our local expert had recommended 2 days there, and we were the ones who asked to cut it short to 1 days, and put that extra day into the Dolomites part of our trip. The trip was full of surprises. In Venice, our local expert surprised us with champaign and chocolates. At Lake Como, we had a full 2 room suite with a beautiful view of the lake. Our private boat tour on Lake Como followed by dinner were absolutely wonderful. Great choices were make by our Rough Guides expert. There were also some issues, which almost caused me to give 4 stars instead of 5. The location of our Lake Como Villa required a car which had not been pre-planned. However, our local expert placed us at a Villa with a knowledgeable owner who lived on premises and could drive us into town to rent our car for 3 days. Indeed, the Villa owner was a great resource. A preplanned rental car from Lake Como would have made it better. Another issue was that when we disembarked from our train in Milan, we could not find our private car driver. We looked around for 30 minutes before calling the travel agency. It turns out that the driver was told to wait in front of the Burger King, but we were not told about the meeting location. It took an hour to get this resolved and our driver, who had left after waiting an hour for us, had to come back to the train station to find us and bring us to the hotel. Those were the 2 main issues with the trip. There were some other small hiccups which were easily resolved with a phone call to our local Rough Guides expert. Many, many other details were meticulously attended to. Drivers scheduled for all the other pickup points were on-time and very polite. The train tickets worked perfectly, and we were pleasantly surprised to have business class train tickets with the extra leg room and free snacks. Each hotel that we stayed in was unique and perfect. Our final hotel in Milan gave us a huge room upgrade. Excursions were lots of fun. And, the free time which was scheduled at our request was thoroughly enjoyed. The pre-paid breakfasts at the Chalet Hotel Hartmann in Ortisei and the Galleria Vik in Milan were just exquisite! The positives so far outweighed the negatives that even with the problems, I still feel like this Rough Guides planned trip deserves the full 5 stars.

William Mild Jun 2023

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