Siena Cathedral — the floor, the library, the rooftops, and which ticket to buy

Tickets

Three options, all sold by the Opera della Metropolitana, the cathedral works office. Prices below are from spring 2026 and rise slightly while the floor is uncovered; confirm on the official site before you go.

Cathedral + Piccolomini Library — around €7, or €10 with the floor uncovered. Enough for a short visit.

OPA SI Pass — around €16, or €18 with the floor uncovered, valid three days. Adds the crypt, the baptistery, the Museo dell'Opera and the Facciatone panorama. The ticket to buy for almost everyone.

Porta del Cielo (Gate of Heaven) — around €23, valid three days, includes everything in the OPA SI Pass plus a short guided tour along the walkways under the cathedral roof. Timed and limited; book ahead in summer. It runs from 1 March to 6 January.

Buy online for a timed slot, or at the ticket office on the square next to the cathedral.

The floor — when to see it

The floor is the reason to time your visit. Between the 14th and 16th centuries about forty artists, Domenico Beccafumi among them, laid 56 panels of inlaid and engraved marble — sibyls, Old Testament stories, allegories, the Massacre of the Innocents. For most of the year the most fragile panels are covered with protective boards.

In 2026 the floor is fully uncovered from 27 June to 31 July and from 18 August to 31 October. The gap in early August is the Palio period, when Siena's attention is elsewhere. Dates change every year; the cathedral works office publishes them in spring.

Outside those windows you'll still see the uncovered panels near the entrance and the side aisles, and everything else in the complex. Don't skip Siena for the sake of the floor, but if you can choose your dates, choose these.

Inside the cathedral

Nicola Pisano's pulpit (1265–68). Carved marble panels of the life of Christ, with his son Giovanni and Arnolfo di Cambio among the assistants. A cousin of the Pisa baptistery pulpit — see our Pisa guide — and just as good.

The Piccolomini Library. A room off the left aisle frescoed by Pinturicchio in the early 1500s with the life of Pope Pius II — the pope who rebuilt Pienza. The colours are startlingly fresh. Look up, then down at the illuminated choir books in the cases.

The Piccolomini Altar. Four of its statues are early works by Michelangelo, carved just before he began David.

Donatello's St John the Baptist. A gaunt bronze in the chapel of St John, from his late period.

The heads of the popes. A frieze of 172 terracotta busts of popes looks down from above the nave arches.

The rest of the complex

The Facciatone and the Museo dell'Opera. In 1339 Siena began an enormous new nave that would have turned the existing cathedral into a transept. The Black Death of 1348 stopped it, and the unfinished facade wall — the Facciatone — still stands across the square. The museum is built into the abandoned aisle. Upstairs is Duccio's Maestà (1308–11), the double-sided altarpiece that was carried through the streets to the cathedral in procession; then climb the narrow stairs to the top of the Facciatone for the best view of the Campo and the city. Only a few people are allowed up at a time, so there can be a short wait.

The crypt. Rediscovered in 1999 under the choir: a space filled with earth in the 14th century, which preserved 13th-century wall paintings with their colours almost intact.

The baptistery. Beneath the cathedral's east end, down a flight of steps behind it. The baptismal font has bronze panels by Jacopo della Quercia, Lorenzo Ghiberti and Donatello — three of the founders of Renaissance sculpture working on one object.

How to do it in half a day

Start at the Museo dell'Opera when it opens (it opens earlier than the cathedral) and climb the Facciatone before the queue builds. Then the cathedral and Piccolomini Library, then round the back for the crypt and down to the baptistery. With the Gate of Heaven, slot your tour in after the cathedral. That's three hours at an easy pace.

Sunday mornings are reserved for worship; the cathedral opens to visitors only in the afternoon on Sundays and public holidays, except during the floor-uncovered periods. Dress code: shoulders and knees covered.

Around it

The Duomo sits on the highest of Siena's three ridges, five minutes uphill from the Piazza del Campo. Across the square is the old hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, now a museum with remarkable 15th-century frescoes of hospital life — a separate ticket, and worth it.

Staying overnight? See our Siena guide for where to base, or compare cities in Florence vs Siena.