(A Gothic church with interesting paintings)

The campanile is 14th century and the church was also begun in that period, so the building is mostly Gothic - although as so often with churches it took a couple of hundred years to complete, and the facade remains unfinished to this day. It is the monastery church for the Servites who live next door. Inside it is handsome and spacious and its interesting paintings make it well worth a visit.

Starting on the right at the back, between the first and second chapels there is an attractive fragment of fresco dating from the late 12th or early 13th century, with a Madonna, angel and children. in the second chapel on the left is an important painting of the Madonna and Child by the Florentine artist Coppo di Marcovaldo, one of the earliest Italian painters - he probably inspired both Guido da Siena and Duccio. He was captured by the Sienese at the battle of Monteaperti in 1260, and painted this picture as the price of his freedom. It is a marvellous example of Italian Byzantine, highly stylised with great emphasis on the folds of the rich and gorgeous robes, a perfectly balanced and elegant composition.

The church has not one but two extremely gory pictures of the Massacre of the Innocents, a subject of which Sienese painters were strangely fond. the first, in the fifth chapel on the right, was painted by Matteo di Giovanni in 1491, full of movement and agony, the towering evil-faced figure of Herod almost in among the action directing the operations. Note also the small scene of Hell under the altar in this chapel, with flames looking like rather comfortable orange grass.

The second Massacre is in the chapel to the far right of the altar, possibly by Pietro Lorenzetti, painted about 50 years earlier. This Herod is a remoter figure, directing operations from a high balcony, but the painting is no less fraught with agony and gore, with an interesting early example of the use of horses for crowd control. to the left is another possible Lorenzetti of St Agnes with her symbol of a lamb. Under this is the mummified body of the Blessed Francesco Patrizi, his bony hand stretched out.

In the right transept, between the two Massacres, there is a large and handsome 13th century crucifix of the Duccio school, as is the Madonna and Child over the door of the sacristy. Over the high altar there is a coronation of the Virgin by Bernardino Fungai, and in the chapel on the far left of the altar there are yet more Lorenzetti frescoes, rather damaged, of the dance of Salome - note the head of St John the Baptist still steming, or are they holy rays? - and of the ascension of St John the Evangelist. There is a pretty nativity above the altar of this chapel, with hoopoe at the bottom, painted by Taddeo di Bartolo in 1404.

In the left transept there is a Madonna della Misericordia dated 1431, by Giovanni di Paolo. The Madonna is looking rather constipated, but is elegant of shape, with curiously piercing eyes. In the third chapel on the right, there is a Birth of the Virgin by Rutilio Manetti, with a great play of light and dark as befits a follower of Caravaggio.

1980s.