"Magione" is an old-fashioned word of Italian language, no longer in use today, coming from the Latin "mansio"; while the French correspondent "maison" is still used in common language to say "home". In Latin, and in ancient Italian, "mansio" and "magione" are something more than a house: they are a residence as the object of a quite complex administration, featuring functions of economic management: household, agriculture, hospitality, etc. . "San Pietro alla Magione" therefore designates a church to which a residence is attached. And the residence is used as a resting place for travelers, first of alla the primary travelers of the Middle Ages (Christian but not only): the pilgrims. In fact we are along Via di Camollia, the street which is one of the urban stretches of the Via Francigena: ie, the path leading to /from Rome and which today has been restored for contemporary hikers. It is indeed true - and it must be emphasized - that the pilgrimage routes of the Middle Ages didn't resemble the elaborate, heavily built Roman roads, but were rather an unstable bundle of routes featuring a natural background, and allowing almost infinite alternative branches and deviations. But it's also true that Siena, called "daughter of the road" by the historian Ernesto Sestan, was one of the hubs where the bundles of itineraries reunited to converge on this agglomeration of places of rest and assistance; then it became a flourishing city, one of the greatest cities of Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries. In fact, visiting this church gives, in my opinion, an evocative idea of ​​the ancient (and here even rather lonely) Via Francigena - on which precisely it stands - and of its function - a sacred place and a shelter attached - precisely of "mansion". Don't be mislead: although modest, no-frills - indeed precisely because this - such building clearly tells to us about the Siena of origins. I think it's a "not to be missed".

A nice little church, San Pietro alla Magione was built in the 12th century in a Romanesque style. It is worth a peek if you are walking along Via Camollia.