San Gimignano in the distance Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016 |
We were glad
we did not have any breakfast; the hair pin curves were non-stop. The bluish-green vistas with spectacular trees
were dotted with terra cotta villas and wild flowers, especially red poppies.
My husband is a first class driver and managed all curves like a pro.
We drove by
what appeared to be a prison compound, an unusual site in the midst of so much
beauty. Tall chicken wire fences topped with barbed wire were encircling a
foreboding building with heavy wrought iron bars on the small windows. Two heavily
armed policemen were guarding the access road while their car was parked
nearby. It was most unusual to see
police on such a picturesque country road especially since we never saw one cop
ticketing any drivers.
More Tuscan landscape on lower elevations
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016
Eventually
the road opened up to reveal a foggy bluish fortress in the distance with
fourteen medieval towers, located at an elevation of 1,063 ft., the unmistakable
and famous silhouette of San Gimignano, a walled medieval hill town of 7,768
people in the province of Siena, Tuscany. Known as the Town of Fine Towers, the well-preserved buildings reveal Romanesque
and Gothic architecture.
The gate we entered
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016
The city can
be entered on foot through eight gates; the main gates are Porta San Giovanni
(south ridge), Porta San Matteo (north-west), and Porta S. Jacopo (north east).
Tuscan landscape
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016
Torture museum Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016
After a
minor turnaround, we found a parking spot by the town’s supermarket on the
outside of the city walls. We took off on foot on the steep pedestrian
cobblestone walkway to the fortress. We
passed by the museum of torture and by several tiny shops of local artisans
selling their crafts and food produced in
full view and sold in specialty stores the size of a hole in the wall.
Piazza della Cisterna
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016
In the main
piazza, Piazza della Cisterna, we found a very busy gelato store that was voted
the best gelateria in Italy at the 2015 competition. Of course it broke our
hearts to sample small cones.
Gelateria in San Gimignano
Photo: Ileana Johnson
San
Gimignano produces saffron, a very expensive spice used as medicinal and
cooking ingredient, extracted from a purplish flower called saffron crocus, golden
ham, and a white wine, Vernaccia di San
Gimignano, from an ancient variety of Vernaccia
grape which is grown on the sandstone hills surrounding the town, a wine
desired by popes and poets.
The city is
crossed north south by Via San Matteo and Via San Giovanni. There are four
squares in the center of town: the Piazza Duomo, the Piazza della Cisterna, the
Piazza Pecori, and the Piazza delle Erbe.
San Gimignano 1300 museum exhibits models of the city
as it was 700 years ago. Everything is handcrafted to showcase 800 structures,
72 towers, lovely street scenes, and figurines all with the attention to
artistic detail that Italians are famous for.
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016
During the
third century B.C., there was a small Etruscan village on the site of San
Gimignano. Two patrician brothers, Muzio and Silvio, fled Rome during the Catiline
conspiracy against the Roman Republic in the first century, and settled in
Valdelsa where they built two castles.
The name of
Silvio was changed to San Gimignano in 450 A.D. after the Saint of Modena,
Bishop Geminianus, intervened and saved the castle from the destruction by
Atilla the Hun’s followers. The church
was thus dedicated to the saint and a walled village was built around it in the
sixth and seventh centuries. The area,
surrounded by then thick woods, was called the “Castle of San Gimignano,” and was
ruled by the bishops of Volterra.
In the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance era, Catholic pilgrims going to Rome and to the
Vatican, would stop in San Gimignano to rest before continuing on their pilgrimage.
Although it became independent from Volterra in 1199, the conflict between the
Guelphs, who supported the Pope and Ghibellines, who supported the Holy Roman
Emperor, disturbed the town’s peace for two centuries. The cancerous rivalry
between the two clans resulted in the building of towers, taller and taller, 72
by the end of the Medieval period, with a height of 70 meters. A city ordinance,
which restricted the height of the towers to that of the one near the Palazzo
Comunale, controlled the rivalry.
There is a house which still stands in San Gimignano; it is the home of Santa Fina or Serafina, who was born here in 1238. The Chapel of Santa Fina in the Collegiate Church displays her shrine and frescoes by Ghirlandaio. She is celebrated on March 12, the day she died at the age of 15, paralyzed and attached to a wooden pallet, in unimaginable pain but very positive and encouraging to the world. Because of her invincible spirit in the face of excruciating pain and adversity, she is the patron saint of physically challenged people.
Dante Alighieri is said to have visited San Gimignano on May 8, 1300, as ambassador of the Guelph League in Tuscany. Almost five decades later the city was struck by the Black Death and half of its population died.
Ruled by
Florence, San Gimignano built some Gothic palaces in Florentine style while
towers were cut down to the height of houses but development stopped and this
sleepy little town remained preserved in its medieval form until the 19th
century.
It is
remarkable that even though other cities such as Florence lost their towers due
to wars, conflict, and urban development, San Gimignano preserved fourteen
towers of various heights from its original seventy-two.
Movie
producers used San Gimignano as movie location such as the 1999 drama, Tea with Mussolini. A group of women, English and American
expatriates in Italy, save frescoes from being destroyed during Germany’s
withdrawal at the end of World War II. These frescoes were inside the Duomo,
San Gimignano’s main church.
San Gimignano from outside the walls
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016
After taking
more photographs than I can ever store of the breathtaking views, the yellow
flowers, the bluish green landscape in the distance, the baby blue sky, the dark green trees silhouetting in the distance like soldiers
standing at attention, the vineyards, the red poppies, the yellow and purple
saffron flowers, sunflowers, and the watchtowers from medieval times, we left
for Volterra.
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