March 8: free admission for all women

The Sant’Ansano hall, together with the adjacent San Galgano hall, originally constituted a single large space that served the function of a male pilgrims' dormitory.

The Mantle Chapel of Santa Maria della Scala has been one of the most altered spaces over the course of its long history.

The medieval hospital contains an extraordinary pathway for access to the various levels and connection between the parts: this is the so-called 'internal road' or covered road, which, in the memory of the Sienese of the twentieth century, is most often recalled as 'voltoni'.

From the 14th century the San Pio hall was part of another ‘pellegrinaio’ of the hospital that later became an infirmary.

On 17 August 1379 a resolution of the hospital recorded the existence of a pilgrims' hostel and ordered its duplication in an identical room.

These evocative rooms, located in the heart of Santa Maria della Scala, where Saint Catherine of Siena paused in prayer and brought comfort to the sick, still preserve today the intensity and the atmosphere that for so many centuries has accompanied the religious fervor of the Saint's countless devotees. Known since the 14th century as the confraternity of Saint Michael the Archangel, the company was chiefly devoted to piety for the deceased. 

The Confraternity of the Disciplinati of the Most Holy Mary, later the Society of Executors of Pious Dispositions, is the oldest lay brotherhood located in the undergrounds of Santa Maria della Scala. Initially founded in the Cathedral of Siena, the existence of the confraternity, devoted to pious works, is also mentioned in a letter by Saint Catherine.

In the 1340s, at the height of a historical period of extraordinary significance for Siena and for its main hospital, and in a climate of intense cultural, religious, and political ferment, the care and religious spaces of Santa Maria della Scala were extensively renovated and enriched with decorative programs, paintings, furnishings, and chapels, so much so that the hospital became one of the most important centers of artistic production of the early Sienese Renaissance.

The so-called 'Corticella' is a junction of the hospital routes, located at the intermediate level between Piazza Duomo and the areas at the level of Piazzetta della Selva.

In 1328  the hospital expanded its premises with the construction of a male pilgrim hostel, achieved by acquiring and demolishing surrounding houses to overcome a three-floor difference in level.