Museo della Tortura

The Museo della Tortura (Museum of Torture in English) achieves resounding success thanks to its strong and clear historical value. On the left side of Piazza del Campo as we face Fonte Gaia, right next to the western edge of Palazzo Publico is a museum with branches in every major town of the Sienese district very much tied up with the darkest days of the Middle Ages.

The exhibition is not a splatter show with hideous bloody representations and horror scenes: instruments speak for themselves. The horror aroused in the museum’s visitors viewing the instruments however is so strong that manages to make them fervent allies against torture.

The exhibition aspires to be a true testimony. It uncovers the worst side of human nature: every man hides and holds back a potential butcher. If displayed with great accuracy and propriety, the exhibit helps to fuel a sympathetic awareness on the matter and to respect the opinions and beliefs different from ours, which is the elementary foundation of modern democracy.

A unique worldwide collection of 100 instruments produced to cause pain and death, some of them exceptionally rare that date back to the 16th century as well as recent reconstructions of ancient and lost instruments. This stands together with the ones that are more or less well known like the Guillotine, the Rack, the interrogation Chair, or the Chastity belt.

For the first time very refined instruments like the Heretic’s Fork, the Noise-Maker’s fifes, or the Gatta da Scorticamento and the Spanish Spiders prove with their peculiarity how human imagination had no limit whatsoever in finding new ways to inflict the most atrocious and cruel tortures. More