University of Siena
The University of Siena traces to a 1240 decree by the city's podestà taxing room-renters to fund teachers' salaries — a genuinely municipal, publicly-funded origin that's why it's often cited as Italy's first publicly-funded university, distinct from universities that started as independent student or teacher guilds. Emperor Frederick II and Pope Innocent IV both formally recognised it as a Studium Generale within the following decades, partly on the back of students migrating away from an overcrowded Bologna.
- City
- Siena
- Type
- Public university
- Official site
- Visit website
- Admissions
- How to apply
About the university
It's particularly renowned today for law, medicine, and economics and management, teaching around 16,000 students, and became a fully state institution in 1859. Some programmes use the CISIA "CEnT" standardised admission test rather than a bespoke entrance exam.
As with our shorter-form cities, our deepest, most detailed on-the-ground support currently stays in Turin and Milan — we don't yet have the same neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood rent data or a vetted-rooms network here, and we'd rather say so plainly than pad this page with figures we haven't checked.
Admission for international students generally runs through the standard route: Universitaly pre-enrolment, a Declaration of Value or CIMEA comparability statement for your prior qualification, and — depending on faculty — an entrance test or a language requirement if you're studying in Italian.
See the Siena city guide for what living and studying in the city looks like beyond the university itself.
Living in Siena
Rent, transport, and settling in
How applying here works
- 1
Universitaly pre-enrolment
Your application to Italy, filed on the government portal.
- 2
Declaration of Value or CIMEA
Your prior qualification, made readable to an Italian university.
- 3
Entrance test or language check
Where the faculty asks for one — this is what preparation is for.
We walk you through each step inside the portal. How the application service works, or see the full 20-step journey.