San Gimignano, Towers

(2 photos)

We don’t really know if the structures in this photo are counted as two or three of the fourteen towers that still stand of the original seventy-two medieval towers. In the Palazzo del Popolo, the city hall built in the 1200s, there’s a room called the Dante Room, where he spoke on May 8, 1300. San Gimignano’s historian sure keeps detailed records, while the historian in Pisa forgot to note if the tower was purposely built slanted, or if it was intended to be straight. Many towers in Italy were purposely build on the bias.

One day we watched while skilled woodworkers carved doors and constructed special pieces of furniture. We didn’t watch close enough or long enough to determine if they were building new items, or if they might be “creating” brand new antiques, as we thought we saw in another Italian village.

One visit was on a hot day, and although we arrived at San Gimignano at “nap time” the town was flooded with travelers, so it was impossible to find a parking place in the shade. When we visited on a cold windy day in another year, the long narrow hill-side streets and alleys, lined with five-story stone buildings and fourteen high towers, let us know where they invented the wind-tunnel. Bright sun, but a strong cold, cold wind.
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