San Gimignano

San Gimignano's skyline is medieval one-upmanship fossilised: its merchant families, grown rich on saffron and the Via Francigena pilgrim trade, built some seventy-two tower-houses in a contest of pure altitude, and the fourteen that survive still spike the hilltop like a Manhattan drawn in the thirteenth century. The town's luck was its misfortune - plague and Florentine takeover froze it before anyone could modernise, leaving streets, piazzas and towers essentially as the 1300s arranged them, which is exactly what UNESCO inscribed. Climb the Torre Grossa, the tallest at 54 metres, for the roofscape and the Val d'Elsa rolling away; the Collegiata's fresco cycles and the Palazzo Comunale's museum fill the culture card; and the Vernaccia di San Gimignano poured in every enoteca is one of Italy's oldest named white wines, local pride in a glass.

History

An Etruscan village stood here in the 3rd century BC, and chroniclers tell of two Roman brothers, Muzio and Silvio, who fled the Catiline conspiracy and built two castles, one of them Silvia, renamed San Gimignano in 450 after Bishop Geminianus of Modena was said to have saved it from the followers of Attila. A walled village grew around his church in the 6th and 7th centuries, ruled from 929 by the bishop of Volterra, and the town prospered on the Via Francigena pilgrim route and on saffron and Vernaccia wine. In 1199 it freed itself from the bishops and set up a podestà, but two centuries of conflict between Guelphs and Ghibellines and between families led rival clans to build ever taller tower houses. The Black Death of 1348 killed about half the townspeople, the town submitted to Florence, and 14 of its towers survive; its historic centre is a World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, San Gimignano).

What's there

• The towers from Piazza della Cisterna - the full medieval skyline overhead.
• Torre Grossa - the 54-metre climb to the roofs and the Val d'Elsa.
• The Collegiata frescoes - biblical cycles lining the Romanesque cathedral.
• Vernaccia in an enoteca - the town's ancient white wine with a tower view.

When to go

Spring and autumn for walking weather; come before 10 or after 17 in any season, because the day-trip wave from Florence and Siena owns the middle hours. Evening, when the coaches leave, returns the town to its residents and the light goes honey-coloured.

What to expect

This is one of Tuscany's most visited small towns and the main street is a corridor of souvenir and food shops - the magic lives early, late and in the side lanes. Parking sits below the walls with a climb up. The famous gelato queues are long; the gelato is genuinely good.

Nearby

Volterra half an hour west, Certaldo below, and both Florence and Siena within easy reach.

Key facts