San Gimignano. We do not have many good pictures of the Tuscan countryside, and that is a shame because it is glorious. The poppies are in bloom and the country is late spring / early summer green. Truly wonderful! Which is a very good thing because we got rather lost a couple of times today and saw much more of the countryside than we had planned. We learned quite a bit about hairpin turns and switch-backs today as well.
The outstanding feature of San Gimignano is the towers. There are still quite a few, but there were something like 33 at one time. These things were built by families as ego trips to show how rich and powerful they were. Somewhat like the bank towers in downtown Toronto.
Again, much walking; lovely lunch in a wine bar (San G is noted for a wonderful white wine, but you have to get it there if you want the "wonderful" stuff); then walk up to a park overlooking the country and town (bit of luck in finding that). There were two guys playing harpsicords and selling CDs. This one was particularly bad.
The age of buildings is hard for us to fathom. Here is an old house with the address sign that says it was built in 1233.
This is the inner cloisters of the monistary with parts of the original frescos that date back to the same general time - early 1200's.
Neat flag or torch holder outside an old building that is now used as a small prison.
We found this down an alley at the end of town. There are details like this all over.
We visited the civic museum and climbed the tower. The museum was great and a description on some of the very strange pictures was in one of our Italy books. A series of scenes of a wedding.
These are a few views from the top. The Civic Museum tower is the tallest one in the 3rd picture down at the top of this post.
We returned without incident to spend the last evening in the villa. We found all the right roads and turn offs. Boring.
1 comment:
That looks like MY harpsichord! Those medieval towers are really cool.
- Andrew
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