Saint Gimignano
SAN GIMIGNANO — "delle Belle Torri" — is perhaps the most famous Tuscan city after Florence, Pisa and Siena. The image of this "medieval Manhattan", with towers gliding against the sky instead of skyscrapers, conquered the imagination of tourists. Not without significance is also the possibility of visiting the city during a one-day trip from Florence or Siena.
The city meets all the expectations raised from advertising materials: is not even monumental, very well preserved, attractively provincial and has a range of beautiful religious and secular frescoes. But from May to October, it hardly lives its own life — but it's full of day trippers.. To really empathize with the atmosphere of the city, and not just state, that it is old and half of the treasures of art, you need to arrive long before or after the season. Another possibility is to spend the night here – in the evening the pace of life and the atmosphere are completely different.
A bit of history
Founded in VIII in the. San Gimignano in the early Middle Ages was already a significant force. The city was controlled by two families – Ardinghelli and Salvucci – and a population of fifteen thousand (twice as numerous as today) it became rich thanks to agriculture and its location on the pilgrimage route from Lombardy to Rome. At the peak of development in the twelfth century., the city walls were surrounded by five monasteries, four hospitals, bathhouse and brothel.
However, family feuds were felt. First it exploded in 1246 r. the conflict between the Ardinghelli and the Salvuccis, and for the next century few years passed peacefully.. Opting for guelphs or gibelines added fuel to the fire, and in periods, when the city was reconciled, wars broke out with Volterra, Poggibonsi and other nearby towns. They ended only with the onset of the Black Death., which reached San Gimignano in 1348 r. The plague had a disastrous effect on both the population, as well as the economy, for the pilgrimage movement has ceased. Despite the prostests of Salvuccich, The Ardinghelli family applied to Florence for the status of San Gimignano subordinate to its district.: the proposal was adopted by a majority of only one vote, what makes us aware, how much the city lost its importance at the end of the Middle Ages.
As a result of the submission of Florence, noble families lost power, therefore, San Gimignano remained free from the scourge of squabbles between the aristocracy and the city council., which plagued other Tuscan cities. Towers-topped houses, reminiscent of fortresses, which elsewhere were symbols of the real power of their inhabitants, here they did not pose a threat, therefore they were not demolished; fifteen of them have been preserved (from the original 72). The city itself, twice more plagued by the plague (w 1464 i 1631 Year), led the life of a sunken provincial town. At the beginning of this century, visitors described them as "cruelly impoverished.". He saw a bit of romanticism in this E. M. Forster, who made the city — named Monteriano — the setting for his novel Where Angels Fear to Tread. The post-war history of San Gimignano is a gradual increase in importance, thanks to tourism and the restoration of the production of the long-known vernaccia white wine.
City
San Gimignano remained something like a large village: they can be cut in fifteen minutes, and the walls go around in an hour. However, it deserves at least one day of sightseeing, both because of the frescoes in churches and museums, as well as the landscape – one of the most wonderful in Tuscany.
In Piazza del Duomo and Rocca
Main entrance gate, opposite the bus station (and self-locking parking) to Porta San Giovanni, in the south of the city. Via San Giovanni, built up with a row of defensive palaces, leads from here to the connecting main squares of the city, Piazza della Cistema and Piazza del Duomo. About a hundred meters to the right of the street is the church of St.. Franciszka — Romanesque building recently transformed, like many palaces, to the basement of Yernaccia.
Piazza della Cisterna is accessed through another majestic gate, Arco dei Becci, forming part of the original fortifications, before the expansion in the twelfth century. The square is surrounded by chaotically located towers and palaces, and in the middle is a thirteenth-century water reservoir (still functioning). It's here, as well as in the streets within these original fortifications, had houses the largest families. To the left of the square, next to the arch overlooking Piazza del Duomo, there is one of the Ardinghellich towers; Salvucci's competitor emerges from the back.
More austere Piazza del Duomo, left, it is built up with further towers and public palazzi. Facing the cathedral (or rather collegiate churches, for San Gimignano no longer has a bishop) on the left you have a battlement Palazzo del Popolo, still serving as the town hall, and behind the back the elder Palazzo del Podesta. The Torre della Rognosa of the latter once reached the maximum height allowed for towers — 50 m. Looking around you can see, that this rule was not strictly observed.
Just behind Piazza del Duomo is a marked road to Rocca, old fortress, with one preserved tower and magnificent views. It was built with local expenditures by Florentines, "to remove all the causes of bad thinking of the inhabitants" after the incorporation of the municipality of San Gimignano into Florence. Later, probably when, that the objective has been achieved, Cosimo II Medici demolished the fortress. Today, the walls surround an orchard-like public garden, with figs, olives and a well in the middle.