San Gimignano

San Gimignano is a city that has always aimed high, to challenge the powerful to take power itself. It was a fief of the Bishops of Volterra and earlier an Etruscan and Roman town, in the thirteenth century it became a 'free town' and a century and a half later was subdued by the Florentine conquerors.

The city, entirely surrounded by walls, is still divided on the ancient road system with  the old Francigena and Florentine ways. On the hilltop, where San Gimignano was built, you can see the two main squares: the Cisterna square which is a triangle surrounded by buildings and the Cathedral's one, where all power is concentrated with the city hall and the Dom. The towers are surely the main attraction of San Gimignano but it offers many other artistic works, that make of this medieval town an unique place: the Collegiata, the People's Palace with the highest tower (the Torre Grossa),that houses nowadays  the City Hall, the Dante room (where the poet made embassy in '300), the  secret hearings room with a beautiful  fresco by Sodoma,the Rocca of Montestaffoli, the St. Augustine church (here the cycle of frescoes by Gozzoli is amazing) and then the gates, the palaces, the civic, Etruscan and sacred art museums. 

But there is a place where the soul of San Gimignano is revealed: the Pharmacy of Santa Fina, now in the complex that also houses the Archaeological Museum and the Gallery of Modern Art. Here you can still find some important archaelogical elements as evidence of the assistance activities to the pilgrims on the Francigena  way and of the devotion to Santa Fina (a wonderful legend tells of a flowers' rain to set San Gimignano free by a siege). All that to represent the 'popular soul' of a city that every day had to do with religion and still visible in masterpieces such as the Chapel of Santa Fina with the cycle of frescoes by Ghirlandaio. But bigger is the breath of San Gimignano: it is the charm of its countryside, the life's elegance of a center that radiates its trade in the four corners of the earth.