In the Via di San Pietro is the great red brick Palazzo Buonsignori, with a richly ornamented façade, one of the finest private palaces in Siena in the Gothic style. It was originally built in the fourteenth century, but has a fine court and stairway of the Quattrocento. Between it and the steps to the church is a small Gothic palace of the thirteenth century (completely restored), known as the _Casa della Pia_. This was the house of Count Nello de' Pannocchieschi, whose fair fame (in spite of painters and novelists) recent research has cleared from the imputation of his having been the husband--and therefore the murderer--of La Pia, that hapless lady whom Siena made and Maremma unmade, whom the divine poet met among the dim shades of those who died a violent death.[137] San Pietro alle Scale, the parish church of San Pietro in Castelvecchio, is a structure of the thirteenth century, with a modernised façade and interior. There are two small _tondi_ by Sano di Pietro, representing the Archangel Gabriel and Santa Lucia, in the sacristy. The picture over the high altar, the Repose on the Flight into Egypt with a handsome swarthy Madonna, is a decidedly meritorious work by Rutilio Manetti. At the end of the Via di San Pietro the Porta dell'Arco leads out beyond the older circuit of walls which represented the limits of the city proper, until the Nine inclosed the suburb in the still standing walls of the fourteenth century. The Via Stalloreggi is the continuation of the Via di Città as the Via di San Pietro is of the Via del Capitano. Inclosed by the two, bounded outside by the Via delle Cerchia and the Via Baldassare Peruzzi, is the oldest part of the city. At the corner of the Via di Castelvecchio in the Via Stalloreggi, at a house once belonging to one of the Marescotti, is a fresco by Bazzi, "where a dead Christ, who is in the lap of His Mother, hath a marvellous grace and divinity."[138] The Via di Castelvecchio intersects this oldest part of Siena. It is a tall, narrow winding street, in parts squalid, but with here and [Illustration: POZZO DELLA DIANA]