We left Volterra and headed back towards our Villa and then another 15 minutes in the opposite direction to get to this cute city… San Gimignano. Oh, I loved this city! We walked into the city from the town gate and walked up the main cobbled street. No cars within the gates at all. The girls had fun oohing and ahhing over all the small colored Italian purses along the way. We kept an eye out for the colors that Emily liked the best and discreetly bought one while she wasn’t looking, for her December birthday.
The stone walls, and steep curvy cobblestone streets were beautiful. We made our way to the Piazza della Cisterna named for the old well standing in the center of the square. A clever system of pipes drained rainwater from the nearby rooftops into the underground cistern. This square has been the center of town since the ninth century. Each Thursday the square fills with a market --as it has for more than a thousand years.
They had strings of lights set up that would have been cool in the dark. We stopped and sat on the fountain steps for awhile before heading on.
The adjoining Piazza del duomo… faces the former cathedral. The twin towers to the right are 10th century, among the first in the town.
Interesting… about the 14 of 60 towers that have survived: “Of the original 60 or so towers, only 14 survive. Before effective city walls were developed, rich people fortified their own homes with these towers: they provided a handy refuge when ruffians and rival city-states were sacking the town. These towers became a standard part of medieval skylines. Even after town walls were built, the towers continued to rise now to fortify noble families feuding within a town (Montague and Capulet-style).”
A little San Gimignano history… “In the 14th century, San Gimignano’s good times turned very bad. In the year 1300, about 13,000 people lived here within the walls. Then in 1348, a six-month plague decimated the population, leaving the once-mighty town with barely 4,000 survivors. Once fiercely independent, now crushed and demoralized, San Gimignano came under Florence’s control and was forced to tear down its towers …and Florence redirected the vital trade route away from San gimignano. The town never recovered, and poverty left it in a 14th-century architectural time warp. That well-preserved cityscape, ironically, is responsible for the town’s prosperity today.”
We, of course, were excited to climb one of the towers. This one ended with a one person ladder to climb up. The view was incredible.
“San Gimignano is surrounded by olives, grapes, cypress trees and – in the Middle Ages – lots of wild dangers. Back then, farmers lived inside the walls and were thankful for the protection.”
On the way back down… Megan and Emily
We got REALLY good gelato here. So good that Grandpa went back and ordered another cone of the same stuff.
We had such a great Tuscany trip. Great places. Great food. Great weather. So fun to have Grandma and Grandpa here to share it with. The next day we packed up and headed back to Milan, where we returned Del and Shelley’s nice rental car and put them on a train – with Ryan and Katie – to travel home for another week of fun.
