The University of Siena is a public research university in Siena, in the Tuscany region of central Italy. Its origins trace back to 1240, when the city established a Studium to organise teaching, making it one of the oldest continuously operating universities in Italy and in Europe. The institution received papal backing in 1252, when Pope Innocent IV extended protections to its teachers and students, and in 1355 it was granted the status of Studium Generale by Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, which gave its degrees recognition across the wider Christian world.

Over the following centuries the university endured periods of political turbulence, including the fall of the Republic of Siena to Florence in the mid-sixteenth century and a temporary closure during the Napoleonic era. It gradually recovered and expanded, growing from only a few hundred students in the early twentieth century into a substantial modern institution. The university recorded an enrolment of roughly 15,600 students in the 2021-22 academic year and remains closely tied to the identity of Siena, a comparatively small city where student life and academic activity play a prominent role.

Academically, the university is organised into fourteen departments spanning four broad areas: biomedical sciences; economics, law and political sciences; experimental sciences; and the humanities, covering literature, history, philosophy and the arts. It has a long-standing reputation in fields such as law, medicine and economics, and it offers programmes at the undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels. The university also maintains research facilities and cultural collections, and it continues to attract both Italian and international students to a setting embedded within the historic centre of Siena.