Directly on the Banchi di Sotto, one of Siena's principal medieval thoroughfares and mere steps from the Piazza del Campo, a seventeenth-century palazzo that once belonged to the noble Gori Pannilini family carries the Grand Hotel Continental Siena as naturally as it carries its own stone. The building was converted by the Sienese Chigi Saracini banking family in the early twentieth century and has operated under Starhotels Collezione since 2002, its 51 rooms distributed across four floors of a structure whose street facade — rusticated pietra serena columns framing a barrel-vaulted entrance loggia, an iron lantern suspended above the threshold — has changed little since the palazzo's construction. Inside, the palazzo asserts itself at every turn. Frescoed ceilings with Greek key borders and trompe l'oeil architectural panels establish the decorative register of the grander suites, where canopied beds in gold-and-ivory damask and Venetian carved-glass mirrors sit alongside walnut commodes and powder-blue upholstered armchairs in a way that feels accumulated rather than assembled. The bar occupies a double-height former chapel or ceremonial hall, its most arresting element a monumental antique clock face mounted above the counter, its Roman numerals picked out in gilt against a patinated dark ground. The dining room wraps its terracotta-tiled floors and stucco arabesque ceilings in venetian-red plasterwork hung with Palio equestrian prints, a palette that makes no apology for its Sienese allegiances.

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