Church of the Santissima Annunziata

The church of the Santissima Annunziata, oriented longitudinally with respect to the square, today occupies much of the facade of the hospital. Numerous interventions and transformations have characterized its history, as well as the furnishings and works commissioned for it, some of which are still preserved within its structure, but also those of which traces remain in the rich hospital documentation or in the iconographic tradition. The first testimony of its construction dates back to 1257, the year in which Pope Alexander IV grants the hospital permission to build a chapel and Bishop Bonfiglio of Siena confirms to the rector of Santa Maria della Scala the possibility of erecting a 'ecclesiam sive oratorium'. The first place of worship was not actually built anew, but is likely to be identified in the space characterized by the limestone cladding on the facade, originally intended as the first reception area. By the mid-thirteenth century, this function is moved to the interior of the building, towards the valley behind. Initially likely a chapel, its transformation into a church occurred between the end of the thirteenth century and the mid-fourteenth century. Inside, sources attest to the presence of numerous chapels built by noble families and rectors; significant members of the hospital community or deserving noble families were also buried there. On the external facade in 1335, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti along with Simone Martini were called to paint the 'Stories of the Virgin,' which are now lost, having been erased in 1720 under a layer of plaster, following the removal of the protective roof, by order of Rector Antonio Ugolini Billò. In 1362, with the arrival of the relics, a marble pulpit topped by a pergola was built on the facade of the church, from which the relics were displayed to the population, which had already disappeared by the early eighteenth century when Girolamo Macchi depicted it in the famous drawing of the hospital facade.