If you are spending your holidays in a farmhouse or in a villa in Siena , you could run into festive university students.

The University is one of the most important Sienese institutions, one of those "important things that are at least half a millennium of age" mentioned by the scholar and journalist Pier Francesco Listri in his Dizionario Storico della Toscana.

Mentioned for the first time in a document dated 1240, the Università degli Studi di Siena is one of the most ancient universities in Italy. Only those of Bologna, Parma, Modena and Reggio Emilia are older.

In the second decade of the 14th century many students decided to abandon the University of Bologna and to move to Siena and the University experienced a period of expansion. In 1357, it was finally included in the list of the Universities of the Sacred Roman Empire.

In the 19th century it experienced also some periods of difficulty, such as those linked to the French domination in Tuscany and to the intention by a minister of the Kingdom of Italy to close it, but nowadays it has eight faculties (Economy; Pharmacology; Law; Engineering; Humanities and Philosophy; Medicine; Mathematical, physical and natural sciences; Political sciences) and 20,000 students coming from all over Italy.

The list of its distinguished students and professors includes Pope John XXI, in the world Pietro Ispano, the politicians and ministers of the Italian Republic Luigi Berlinguer and Rosy Bindi, the journalist Ernesto Galli della Loggia and the English historian Paul Ginsborg.