Siena & San Gimignano - Hilltop towns of Tuscany
- An autumn break in one of the most extraordinary of Tuscan hill towns, San Gimignano.
- Visits to nearby places – Volterra, Monteriggioni and two to Siena.
- Led by Dr Antonia Whitley, expert art historian, with a PhD on Sienese society in the 15th century.
- Beautiful landscape, wonderful streetscape, outstanding mediaeval and Renaissance painting, great buildings.
INTRODUCTION
The Campo, Siena.
Towards the end of an autumn afternoon, when the last of the day trippers have departed and the shutters have clattered down on the souvenir shops, an ineffable timelessness descends. While dusk begins to obscure the hills and darken the streets, the inhabitants get on with their lives – shopping, socialising, doing business – amidst the most extraordinary streetscape in Europe. The ordinary within the quite extraordinary – that is the charm of Italy. San Gimignano is not a museum but a living country town.
It is also so improbable a phenomenon, with fourteen hundred-foot stone tower houses, that a day trip does not always suffice to eradicate incredulity, let alone allow the visitor to feel the austere magic of the place. Scarcely changed in appearance for six hundred years, and looking like a balding porcupine in a searingly beautiful Tuscan landscape, the town provides a microcosm of life and art in mediaeval Italy.
The towers and circuit of walls were built not only in response to hostilities with neighbouring city-states but also to the incessant conflict between the swaggering, belligerent nobility and the emergent merchants and tradesmen.
Nevertheless, the little city flourished. A nodal point on the main north-south road to Rome, hospices and friaries swelled to serve pilgrims, officials and traders. Wealth, pride and piety conspired to attract some of the best artistic talent to embellish the churches. But San Gimignano never recovered from the double blow of the Black Death of 1348 and submission to Florence shortly after.
Extending the theme of hilltop towns, the tour also visits Monteriggioni, a one-horse village with magnificent fortifications. And visits are made to two of the greatest: Volterra, rugged and dour, and Siena, the largest and the most beautiful of them all. Spilling across three converging hilltops, Siena contains perhaps the most extensive spread of mediaeval townscape in Europe. Culturally the town reached its peak in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. There is plenty of excellent Renaissance art here, but it is mediaeval painting for which the city is best known. Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers were among a host of brilliant artists who created the distinctive Sienese style: exquisite delicacy of design, detail and colour, and images which are godly yet humane, numinous yet naturalistic.
This tour provides opportunity for a concentrated study of Siena, not only its art and architecture but also its history. Mediaeval sculpture and painting is its main subject matter because of its exceptional quality and quantity, but Renaissance and Mannerist painters such as Pinturicchio, Sodoma and Beccafumi will also be surveyed. There is also good representation of Florentine masters from Ghiberti to Michelangelo.
It is also so improbable a phenomenon, with fourteen hundred-foot stone tower houses, that a day trip does not always suffice to eradicate incredulity, let alone allow the visitor to feel the austere magic of the place. Scarcely changed in appearance for six hundred years, and looking like a balding porcupine in a searingly beautiful Tuscan landscape, the town provides a microcosm of life and art in mediaeval Italy.
The towers and circuit of walls were built not only in response to hostilities with neighbouring city-states but also to the incessant conflict between the swaggering, belligerent nobility and the emergent merchants and tradesmen.
Nevertheless, the little city flourished. A nodal point on the main north-south road to Rome, hospices and friaries swelled to serve pilgrims, officials and traders. Wealth, pride and piety conspired to attract some of the best artistic talent to embellish the churches. But San Gimignano never recovered from the double blow of the Black Death of 1348 and submission to Florence shortly after.
Extending the theme of hilltop towns, the tour also visits Monteriggioni, a one-horse village with magnificent fortifications. And visits are made to two of the greatest: Volterra, rugged and dour, and Siena, the largest and the most beautiful of them all. Spilling across three converging hilltops, Siena contains perhaps the most extensive spread of mediaeval townscape in Europe. Culturally the town reached its peak in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. There is plenty of excellent Renaissance art here, but it is mediaeval painting for which the city is best known. Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers were among a host of brilliant artists who created the distinctive Sienese style: exquisite delicacy of design, detail and colour, and images which are godly yet humane, numinous yet naturalistic.
This tour provides opportunity for a concentrated study of Siena, not only its art and architecture but also its history. Mediaeval sculpture and painting is its main subject matter because of its exceptional quality and quantity, but Renaissance and Mannerist painters such as Pinturicchio, Sodoma and Beccafumi will also be surveyed. There is also good representation of Florentine masters from Ghiberti to Michelangelo.
ITINERARY
DAY 1
Fly at c. 11.35am (British Airways) from London Gatwick to Pisa. All four nights are spent in San Gimignano.
DAY 2
San Gimignano. In San Gimignano, visit the Romanesque collegiate church containing two great cycles of trecento frescoes depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments, the town hall, also with 14th-century frescoes and a small art gallery. Among the Renaissance works of art seen today are frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli and an altarpiece by Pollaiuolo in the church of Sant’Agostino. Study the development of the city in the streets, alleys and squares, and walk along a stretch of the walls.
DAY 3
Siena. Siena is the largest of hilltop towns in Tuscany, distinguished by red brick and architectural and artistic design of an exquisite elegance. The cathedral museum contains Duccio’s Maestà, the finest of all mediaeval altarpieces. The 14th-century Palazzo Pubblico has frescoes by Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers. Visit also the cathedral, an imposing Romanesque and Gothic construction of white and green marble with outstanding Renaissance sculpture and painting including Pinturicchio’s brilliant frescoes in the Piccolomini Library and the font by Ghiberti, Donatello and Jacopo della Quercia.
DAY 4
Volterra, Siena. A wonderful morning drive through Tuscan hills to the episcopal seat of Volterra (which in the early Middle Ages claimed suzerainty over San Gimignano), a rugged mediaeval hilltop town. Visit the art gallery and the Romanesque cathedral, which has fine Renaissance sculpture. Return to Siena to visit the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, with its exceptional collection of Renaissance frescoes.
DAY 5
Monteriggioni. Situated on the Florence-Siena border, the fortress of Monteriggioni is little more than a hamlet surrounded by an extraordinary circuit of 13th-century walls. Drive to Pisa for the flight to London Gatwick, arriving c. 19.10pm.
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