A Forest of Medieval Towers Gives San Gimignano a Surreal Quality

Dante spoke here.

He was serving as an emissary for his native Florence, but his fellow citizens voted to condemn him to death in absentia. Dante never returned home.

The room where he spoke, known now as the Sala di Dante, is one of the chambers in the city museum in the city hall, which also houses a small collection of medieval masterpieces.

If you come to San Gimignano today, you may wonder how Dante ever found the place. Like a diamond lost in the rolling sea of hills in the province of Tuscany, San Gimignano seems like a surreal mirage. Yet it is real.

Crowning a hill above silvery olive groves and verdant vineyards, San Gimignano looks almost as it did in Dante’s time, its trademark towers and forbidding wall still intact.

An independent city-state in 1199, San Gimignano’s origins are obscure. The town may have been named after a local saint who, in the 6th Century, rescued the town from a barbarian horde led by a warlord name Tortila.

According to legend, Gimignano stood on a battlement in a suit of armor that gleamed ethereally in the Italian sun. Tortila took the unearthly glow to be an omen from the gods, and fled.

San Gimignano was saved.

Although Gimignano may have saved the town from the barbarians, no one could save the citizens of San Gimignano from themselves. Like every other town in medieval Italy, San Gimignano split into warring factions known as Guelphs and Ghibellines.

By the time Dante arrived to plead with the citizens of San Gimignano to side with the Guelphs, family feuds were as rampant as modern gang wars.

The forest of towers that the noblemen or magnates built served as medieval versions of spy satellites.

Each family manned its bastion to maintain constant surveillance on its neighbors. When the cold wars became hot, feuding families lobbed spears, rocks, flaming arrows and burning pitch at each other, occasionally incinerating large sections of the town.

By 1348, a combination of family feuds and plague decimated San Gimignano, and in 1352 it was annexed by the neighboring city-state of Florence.

Of the 72 towers that once existed, only 15 are left. Only one, the Torre Grossa, a part of the city hall, is open to the public. From there you can scan the entire town, including the Romanesque cathedral or duomo, the austere Church of San Agostino, the ruins of the town castle, and the labyrinth of medieval streets.

The city hall, or Palazzo Popolo, contains several important sights. The courtyard with its Renaissance-style arcade may remind you of the stage set of some of Shakespeare’s comedies or “Romeo and Juliet.”

The museum in the town hall displays several early Italian masterpieces, including works by Lippo Lippi and de Bartolo. Lippo Memmi’s “Maesta” dominates the Sala di Dante.

Many visitors miss the frescoes in the antechamber, a comic strip tableau that shows an Italian princeling sharing a sort of medieval Jacuzzi with his lady love, a scene somewhat out of sync with the dolorous assortment of Madonnas and crucifixes in the next room.

The 174-foot Torre Grossa was deliberately designed by the city authorities to be taller than any tower in town. By forbidding anyone to build anything higher, the city council hoped to stem the family squabbles that often threatened to destroy the city.

Unlike other towers in neighboring towns which are cramped and narrow, the stairway up the Torre Grossa is user-friendly, and anyone over six feet tall will appreciate this wide, well-lighted, commodious concession to the 20th century.

Once you reach the top of the tower, you’ll see why the burghers who built it found it such a strategic asset. You can spy on everyone in town, from St. Matthew Gate on one end to St. John’s Gate on the other. You’ll get a bird’s view of secret terraced gardens, cloistered religious retreats, the ant-like crowds of tourists photographing each other in front of the cathedral. And if you’re lucky, you may hear the strains of a chamber concert in the cathedral courtyard.

Completed in 1460, the dark, quintessential Romanesque cathedral, or duomo, is next to the Palazzo Popolo. The walls are covered with frescoes, but you’ll have to slip a few hundred lira into a coin machine to have them illuminated.

On the left side of the church are scenes from the Old Testament by Bartolo di Fredi. On the right side, the New Testament by Barna da Siena, who later influenced major Siena artists such as Duccio and Martini.

A grisly portrayal of Hell, worthy of Dante’s Inferno, by Taddeo di Bartolo, is also on the right side of the church. Santa Fina’s Chapel is off to the right as you enter and is decorated with frescoes by Ghirlandaio.

Santa Fina, a sort of local patron saint, was a 13-year-old damsel who lived in the 13th Century, and committed the sin of accepting an orange from a stranger. After Santa Fina’s mother lectured her on the perils that such a fall from grace might precipitate, Santa Fina took to her bed, an oak board, and remained there until her death five years later.

Once transformed into an angel, Santa Fina seemed to have led a rather eventful existence. She rescued a handsome young mason who fell from a scaffold while working on the cathedral.

As another young man entered church, Santa Fina exorcised a devil that had possessed him. Still in angel form, she rescued an entire ship that was about to capsize in a violent storm.

These unusual facts are dutifully chronicled in the Museum of the Hospital and Pharmacy of Santa Fina, housed in the Church of San Lorenzo.

In addition to learning more than you probably ever wanted to know about Santa Fina, you can see a rather peculiar mixture of miscellany: medieval pharmaceuticals, medicine jars and bottles and samples of medieval glass.

Other sights include the ruins of the castle, known as La Rocca, where you can view the surrounding Tuscan countryside. If you are from California or the Southwest, the austere brick Church of San Agostino will remind you of the early Spanish missions built by the Franciscan padres. A trail around the town will give you an excellent panorama both of the ancient city wall and the countryside beyond.

Although San Gimignano’s major sights are worth seeing, it’s always important to remember that rushing from sight to sight is not the best way to savor San Gimignano.

The most important sights here are the places you discover on your own. The best time to take a personal tour, especially during the high season in summer, is at sunrise before the hordes of tour buses arrive, or at sundown after the tour buses have left.

At dawn, the light from the rising sun turns the austere stone facade of the cathedral and the city hall to a mellow gold. The nearby towers cast their long ominous shadows across the piazzas.

The grim brick facade of San Agostino gives off an almost rosy glow, and if there has been a heavy dew during the night, wispy clouds of mist rise from the floors of the dozens of hills and valleys that surround the town.

As the dawn deepens into day in the Piazza del Duomo, a cafe proprietor wipes off the marble bar and the air becomes full of the aroma of espresso. A few of the elderly and devout struggle slowly up the wide steps to the cathedral for early morning prayer. Doves circle overhead from perches high in the Torre Grossa or Torre Podesta across the square.

This too is the time to wander down the brick and cobblestone side streets lined with 15th-Century row houses, flower pots and ivy-covered garden walls.

Only evening rivals morning as the time that San Gimignano at its best. The Palazzo Popolo and the Palazzo Podesta are illuminated by dozens of lights. The villagers gather around the piazza to socialize, and San Gimignano assumes an almost magical aura.

Try to avoid San Gimignano in August. It’s hot, and its farmers build bonfires continuously, covering the rolling Tuscan countryside with an ugly, smoggy haze.

If you are driving, San Gimignano is off the main network of Superstrada A-1. From Florence, take an extension of Superstrada A-1 in the direction of Siena. Exit at Poggibonsi. Make sure that you are taking the extension of A-1 and not A-1 itself, which leads to Rome. The town is about 40 miles from Florence, making it ideal for a day trip.

By train, from Florence, take the train bound from Siena that will take you through Empoli to Poggibonsi. Get off at Poggibonsi and take the bus to San Gimignano. You’ll need to buy a bus ticket at the tabacchi (tobacco counter) inside the rail terminal; you cannot buy a bus ticket aboard the bus.

From other points: San Gimignano, like Siena, is on a side line that runs from Empoli in the north to Chiusi to the south. All trains that run between Pisa and Florence stop at Empoli. All trains that run from Florence to Rome stop at Chiusi.

By bus: You can take a bus from Siena, which departs from the bus station next to San Domenico’s cathedral. Buy a ticket at the ticket office before you board the bus. Because San Gimignano is even closer to Siena than to Florence, you can day-trip from there, too.

Accommodations: It is possible but difficult to find a place to stay during the high season, so reservations are almost a necessity, especially around July 2 and Aug. 16, the two dates on which the Palio takes place in nearby Siena.

San Gimignano takes the overflow from Siena and all rooms are likely to be booked. Hotels tend to be expensive, but several agencies specialize in inexpensive rooms.

For hotel reservations: Ufficio Informazioni Turistiche, via S. Giovanni, 125 San Gimignano, Italy 53037.

For inexpensive rooms, try La Rocca, Via dei Fossi 35A, or Agencia d’Affari Simona, via San Giovanni 95. Prices are about $25 per room.

Dining: One popular spot to eat in town is Ristorante La Stella, north of the duomo at Via San Mateo 77. Prices are reasonable, with a meal costing between $7 and $20.

For more information on travel to Italy, contact the Italian Government Travel Office, 360 Post St., Suite 801, San Francisco 94108, (415) 392-6206.