The Medieval Manhattan

A travel guide to the Tuscan hilltown of San Gimignano

The medeival towers of San Gimignano.

San Gimignano is the poster child of Tuscan hilltowns, a miniscule medieval metropolis of

stone towers

bristling above the vineyards that produce a tart, straw-colored

white wine

ranked among Italy's best.

The city was riding high in the 14th and early 15th centuries, when rival textile families counted their worth by the height of their towers (used to dry long cloths and occasionally wage war on each other). When the town's fortunes failed, no one bothered tearing down its antiquated towers, unintentionally preserving San Gimignano for tourism to rediscover centuries later.

SAN GIMIGNANO 101
Information
www.sangimignano.com
Where to stay
Hotel Bel Soggiorno
Hotel La Cisterna
Hotel Leon Bianco
Hotel L'Antico Pozzo
» More hotels in town (from €80)
» B&Bs in San Gimignano (from €60)
» Apartments in town (from 60€)

Try to spend the night

: when the tour bus hordes disappear by 5:30pm, the town comes back to life and the medieval air rekindles in its stone-clad alleys.

The best view of the skyline is from the ruined ramparts of

La Rocca,

a tumbled-down medieval fortress now planted with a tiny town park.

Back on the main piazza, you can climb past the lovely small civic museum of paintings—including rare 14th century secular frescoes of a wedding night—to the top of the town's tallest tower, the

Torre Grosso

(adm), for a postcard panorama of patchwork fields.

The Tuscan countryside view from the ramparts of San Gimignano.

Every inch of the

Collegiata's

(main church) interior (adm) is swathed in colorful Gothic and early Renaissance frescoes that illustrate, comic strip–style, Biblical scenes for the illiterate masses.

At the far end of town sits the little-visited 13th century

Sant'Agostino

preserving gorgeous 15th century frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli and Sebastiano Mainardi.

The tourist office sells a cumulative ticket that gets you into all the main sights in town (save the privately-run

Torture Museum

), including those mentioned above plus the modest

Museums of Sacred Art and of Archaeology

(Etruscan and Roman remains), the

Spezeria di Santa Fino

historic pharmacy, and the new

Modern Art Museum

featuring rotating exhibits.

Where to Stay in San Gimignano

A room at the Hotel Bel Soggiorno, with the Tuscan countryside right outside your window.

No hotel in San Gimignano is cheap. The best you can do is the rather nice

Hotel Bel Soggiorno

(Via San Giovanni 91, 0577-940-375, www.hotelbelsoggiorno.it; from €110 online).

The secret to saving money here are

Bed & Breakfasts

and

affittacamere (rental rooms).

They can be hit-or-miss, but some are quite lovely, and they start as low as €50. The

tourist office

can give you a list (Le Vecchie Mura restaurant, below, even rents a couple at 36E/$32), you can get a sneak-peak at several through www.sangimignano.com, and you can book many through

Venere.com

(under "Bed & Breakfasts" and "Town House Suites") and the local agency Associazione Strutture Extralberghiere, Piazza della Cisterna 6 (0577-943-111).

For more hotels in San Gimignano, click here.

Where to Eat in San Gimignano

The budget trick in San Gimignano is to get off the tourist-choked main street.

Le Vecchie Mura

serves hearty local fare at long communal tables under brick-vaulted 18th century horse stalls, plus there's a lovely summer terrace outside atop the city walls (Via Piandornella 15, 0577-940-270).

Near the Porta San Matteo end of town sits

Osteria delle Catene,

a medieval vault with modern art and lighting fixtures where locals gather to enjoy everything from mixed meat and cheese platters to full Tuscan meals accompanied by excellent Italian wines (Via Mainardi 18, 0577-941-966).

How to Get to San Gimignano

Getting to San Gimignano by public transportation is frustrating. First you have to get a bus or a train (from Siena direct, from Florence through Empoli) to Poggibonsi, from which 19 buses (only two on Sundays) trundle up to San Gimignano.

Sundays only, there's an 8:30am bus direct from Florence to San Gimignano. For more information, visit www.sangimignano.com

[This is an excerpt from my article "Twice the Tuscany, Half the Cost," originally published in the September 2002 issue of Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel magazine. All information was updated in September 2006. Reprinted with persmission.]