"Per Ornato Della Citt[grave{a}]": Siena's Strada Romana and Fifteenth-Century Urban Renewal

What is perhaps most striking about fifteenth-century zoning policies in Siena is their concentration around the pontificate of Pius II, whose three visits to Siena in February 1459, January-September 1460, and May 1464 coincided with frenetic building activity and maintenance of the city fabric. [61] As has been mentioned, Niccol[grave{o}] Severini and Lodovico Peltoni, the Sienese ambassadors in Mantua, strongly enjoined the commune to make necessary improvements for welcoming the papal court, and these were carried out through zoning provisions, enforced "particularly on account of the visit of the court of Rome." [62] To this end, not only were all butchers forced to relocate their businesses out from the city center to the bottom of the hill of Fontebranda, but a series of restrictions were also introduced to control the trades plied on the Campo and along the Strada Romana. [63] The latter restrictions enforced statute decisions of 1452, which clearly expressed the economic and aesthetic criteria that underpinned these decisions:

it would be much more useful, honorable and beautiful if the more noble and appropriate trades, especially for foreigners, were located in sites that are more public and hallowed in the city, and more frequented by foreigners to the city, particularly those traveling to and from Rome, which are an infinite number ... so that seeing these various wares they may be encouraged to buy, but not seeing them, they do not even think of doing so. [64]

Through zoning provisions that encouraged bankers, goldsmiths, and cloth merchants to concentrate along the Strada Romana, the commune facilitated sales of precious Sienese wares to foreigners to the city. [65] In turn, capitalizing on the increasing rental value of shop space along the main street, patrons regularly included shops in the ground story of new palaces. [66] Thus, for example, in 1481 Andrea di Nanni Piccolomini claimed he earned as much as two hundred florins in rent from the many shops in the new palace near the Campo, while the rent from shops under the Loggia Piccolomini sufficed to pay for its maintenance. [67] Likewise, the Spannocchi family earned twenty florins from its palace's shops in 1488, while the Sansedoni family members shared the ownership (and rental income) of the shops in their palace. [68]

In addition to promoting the right kind of business along the Strada Romana, the Ornato was principally concerned with its physical beautification. The majority of Ornatomediated interventions was aimed at the removal of ballatoi, cantilevered balconies that projected from buildings and invaded the open space of the street, reducing ease of movement along it and access of light and lowering the general decorum of the public space. [69] Ballatoio demolitions throughout the city, especially along the Strada Romana, were Frequently approved by the commune through the Ornato, which

works incessantly and obliges all citizens without exception to improve the civic image and renew the city's appearance by appropriate and beautiful works, and especially by removal of overhangs from the most prominent sites. This particularly in the street of Camollia because visitors to the city see that street more than any other. And it is already clear how beautiful the street has become from the demolition of many of these overhangs. [70]