Buonconvento

Buonconvento is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Siena in the Italian region Tuscany, located about 70 km south of Florence and about 25 km southeast of Siena in the area known as the Crete Senesi. It is one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia ("The most beautiful villages of Italy").

History
Buonconvento (from the Latin bonus conventus, "happy place") is mentioned for the first time in 1100. In 1313 the German emperor Henry VII died here.

It was surrounded by a line of walls starting from 1371, carried on by the Republic of Siena to which it belonged until 1559, when it became part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It was annexed to Italy in 1861.

Main sights
The local museum of art, the Museo d'Arte Sacra della Val d'Arbia, houses works by Duccio di Buoninsegna, Pietro Lorenzetti, Andrea di Bartolo, Matteo di Giovanni and other Tuscan painters, taken from local churches. The church of Santi Pietro e Paolo has a Madonna Enthroned with Child (c. 1450) by Matteo di Giovanni and an early-fifteenth century fresco of the Sienese school. The fortified pieve of Sant'Innocenza a Piana dates from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Most of Buonconvento's frazioni house medieval or Renaissance castles.

The church of St. Lawrence in Bibbiano has a cyborium by Ventura Salimbeni.

Frazioni
Inhabited places in the comune consist of the town of Buonconvento, the frazioni of Bibbiano, Ponte d'Arbia and Serravalle, and other settlements including Castelnuovo Tancredi, Chiatina, Percenna and Piana.