A stone alley way in San Gimignano
San Gimignano, surrounded by walls built during the Thirteenth Century, is an Italian hill town in the province of Siena, Tuscany, southwest of Florence. During the Middle Ages, it was a stopover for those enroute from Siena or Florence to Rome. It was also on the route from England and France to Rome during the Crusades. Near the main gate, a Twelfth Century pilgrims’ shelter still stands.Many families became quite rich by supplying the travelers with supplies and a place to sleep. As a consequence, many of these rich families had their own armies and felt they deserved their own palaces. However, the walls around the city prevented them from building walled palaces, so they built towers instead. There were once seventy-two towers in San Gimignano, but things happened over the centuries, and now there are only fourteen that remain standing.One pair of towers have stood side-by-side for more than 700 years. They, like most of the rest of the towers, are mostly empty shells, built by a family named Salvucci, simply to show off. At the time they were built, no one was allowed to build higher than the old City Hall, which was 170 feet tall. So, the Salvucci family built two towers, each130-feet tall and totaling 260 feet. It was pure ego.Here are some other interesting facts about San Gimignano. Before it became a well-known Middle Ages village on the route to Rome, San Gimignano began as a small Etruscan village around 1300 BC. At one point it was called Silvia, named for two Roman brothers. The name was changed to San Gimignano around 450 AD, after Saint Geminianus who was reported as having defeated Atilla the Hun in the mid-5th Century. During my visit to San Gimignano in 2019, just before the Covid pandemic shut down tourism in Italy, I found it easy to imagine the narrow streets and the open central plaza filled with Crusaders riding huge chargers and wearing armor, both horse and man, and of pilgrims pushing and shoving to get food and supplies. I also could imagine it through the centuries filled with farmers and tradespeople, children, dogs, and horse-drawn wagons. But I can say I ever thought of it as an Etruscan village. Who were the Etruscans, anyway. Mongols maybe? That would explain Atilla the Hun having been there. Fast forward to the 20th Century and during WWII. The Germans occupied that region of Italy and used the towers to view the surrounding area. The Allies used the towers as landmarks for navigating. Add to that, Tea with Mussolini, a 1999 film about English and American women in Italy during WWII, was partially filmed in San Gimignano.
I was sixteen the first time I traveled to Europe, to Denmark as an exchange student. My parents collected early American furniture and what was considered antiques. The house of my host family in Denmark was 400 years old and had been used to hide Jews escaping Denmark when Germany invaded at the beginning of the war. The nearby church was 800 years old. Prior to that time, I thought seventy-five, the age to qualify as an American antique at that time, was old. That trip opened my eyes. I’ve loved history ever since