The large complex of Santa Maria della Scala, situated in the heart of Siena, in front of the cathedral, was one of the earliest European examples of a hospital, with its own autonomous organization and structured to care for pilgrims, assist the poor and provide for abandoned children. The Santa Maria della Scala extraordinarily preserved intact the testimony of a thousand years of history, a path that, from the Etruscan and Roman art, from the Middle Ages to the Reinassance, comes down to us unbroken.