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The variety of civil building and rebuilding in early-fourteenth-century Siena was matched by the multiplicity of churches that were being started or enlarged. Among the latter, San Domenico and San Francesco rank as two of the most important brick constructions in Central Italy. Both were replacements for more modest buildings, and both flow directly from the thirteenth-century Tuscan mendicant tradition.
The existing San Domenico seems to date from after 1309, when materials for the east end were being amassed. The enormous brick pile of the choir and transepts, towering above the Fontebranda, is built up from the hillside on a high substructure which contains a vaulted crypt so monumental as to be effectively a lower church.
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