We are off to the “Manhattan” of Tuscany, the affectionate sobriquet of San Gimignano, for the second half of our day-tour from Florence.
A short drive from Siena, our next stop is San Gimignano.
Long before the Woolworths would achieve similar prominence, San Gimignano’s most affluent residents competed for superiority through the erection of increasingly taller towers. Designed for function as well as form, these strongholds not only afforded the owners strategic views of imminent threats but served as a sanctuary for noble families to retreat during the ever-present threat of the Middle-Age siege!
I am endlessly amazed by mankind’s resourcefulness as evidenced in every step of my travels. Today, we rely on computers to do our “thinking,” yet there is very little that has not already been achieved by some generation who came before us. In a time when “letters” were reserved for scholars and the clergy, innovators of old nonetheless advanced from solving the problems which threatened their very existence to those which made life more sanitary, then more comfortable, and later, purely sublime! I often wonder how lmany eons it would take for this generation to redevelop those critical skills, if we ever lost the crutch of automation! But I digress…
We begin with a requisite visit to the Duomo (anyone who is anyone in Italy has one of these!)
Frescoed scenes, painted to instill religious zealotry in the illiterate masses, start from the far left of each wall and are “read” across each level from left to right.
Beginning with the Old Testament from the Creation on to the forbidden fruit, then back to the second level, with the banishment from the Garden of Eden, and so on, these incredible images convey a story which congregants were compelled to contemplate during the fiery sermons of the Middle Ages! Catholic or not, these scenes compel and draw you in.
We next opt for a climb up Torre Grossa, the tallest tower in the city at 200 feet, and having sufficiently worked off our earlier gelato, we capture some breathtaking photos from this promontory before our next stop at the church of Sant’Agostino in the northeastern part of the city, where Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes further instruct parishioners on the life of St. Augustine.
We journey on to the Piazza della Cisterna, a beautiful square with an old stone well once used to capture precious water, where the Thursday market gathers for locals seeking the freshest ingredients for tonight’s “cena”. This is the perfect place to enjoy an outdoor espresso while contemplating life and the universe before heading back to our vehicle for a drive to Chiante where we will enjoy a fine dinner. We then return to Florence, where we will somehow begin to digest the tantalizing sights and savory delights derived during this fine day in Tuscany!
