San Gimignano
Interesting facts
- To end the race for height, the town council ruled that no private tower could rise higher than the one beside the Palazzo Comunale.
- Dante Alighieri came to San Gimignano on 8 May 1300 as ambassador of the Tuscan Guelph League, and a hall of the town palace is named after him.
- E. M. Forster turned San Gimignano into the fictional town of Monteriano in his 1905 novel Where Angels Fear to Tread.
- M. C. Escher depicted the town's celebrated towers in a woodcut titled San Gimignano in 1923.
- Franco Zeffirelli used San Gimignano as a stand-in for Assisi in his 1972 film Brother Sun, Sister Moon, shooting most of the "Assisi" scenes here.
- The triangular Piazza della Cisterna takes its name from a cistern built in 1287, and its central well of 1346 was long the town's main water source.
- The town is ringed by three circuits of walls, and its eight gates open in the second circuit, built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
- Before the medieval town, a small Etruscan village stood on the hill as early as the third century BC.
- Besides its patron Geminianus, the town honours Saint Fina, born here in 1238, whose feast falls on 12 March; a house said to be hers still stands.
- The medieval poet Folgore da San Gimignano, who lived from about 1270 to 1332, was born in the town and took its name.
Why it is worth it
San Gimignano announces itself from miles away across the Val d'Elsa: a hilltop crowned by square stone towers that rise above the vineyards like a cluster of medieval skyscrapers. Fourteen of them survive from a skyline that, towards the end of the Middle Ages, counted some seventy-two tower houses, a few of them said to have reached seventy metres. The town sits at about 324 metres on a ridge between Florence and Siena, and its compact walled centre has changed remarkably little since the fourteenth century.
The towers were the product of wealth and rivalry. San Gimignano prospered as a staging post on the Via Francigena, the pilgrim road to Rome, and its merchant families competed to build ever higher, both for defence and for prestige. The tallest still standing is the Torre Grossa of 1311, 54 metres high, attached to the Palazzo Comunale, the former seat of the podestà, which now houses the town gallery and a Maestà frescoed by Lippo Memmi. The good years ended abruptly: the Black Death of 1348 killed about half the population, the town submitted to Florence, many towers were cut down to the height of ordinary houses, and San Gimignano slipped into a long sleep that preserved its medieval form until visitors rediscovered it in the nineteenth century. Its name comes from Geminianus, the bishop of Modena whom tradition credits with saving the settlement from the followers of Attila in 450.
Behind the plain façade of the Collegiata, consecrated in 1148, the walls are covered with fourteenth-century painting: an Old Testament cycle by Bartolo di Fredi, completed around 1356, a New Testament cycle generally attributed to Lippo Memmi, and a Last Judgement by Taddeo di Bartolo dated 1393. The Chapel of Santa Fina, designed by Giuliano da Maiano, holds frescoes of the young local saint painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio around 1475, and the church of Sant'Agostino has works by Benozzo Gozzoli. The historic centre became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990. The surrounding hills produce Vernaccia di San Gimignano, a white wine, as well as saffron.
Getting there
San Gimignano lies about 9 km from Colle di Val d'Elsa and about 11 km from Poggibonsi, whose station, Poggibonsi–San Gimignano, is the nearest railway stop and is linked to the town by bus. The nearest airport is Florence Airport, Peretola (FLR), about 40 km away in a straight line.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Monteriggioni 18.0 km · city-walls
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
San Gimignano is a small walled medieval hill town in the province of Siena, Tuscany, north-central Italy. Known as the Town of Five Towers, San Gimignano is famous for its medieval architecture, unique in the preservation of about a dozen of its tower houses, which, with its hilltop setting and encircling walls, form "an unforgettable skyline". Within the walls, the well-preserved buildings include notable examples of both Romanesque and Gothic architecture, with outstanding examples of secular buildings as well as churches. The Palazzo Comunale, the Collegiata and Church of Sant'Agostino contain frescos, including cycles dating from the 14th and 15th centuries. The "Historic Centre of San Gimignano" is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The town is also known for saffron, its dry-aged and saffron infused Golden Ham, pecorino cheese, and local white wine—Vernaccia di San Gimignano—produced from the ancient variety of Vernaccia grape grown on the sandstone hillsides of the area.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
43.46772, 11.04322per Wikidata