Tuscan Hilltops

The hill towns or cities of Tuscany are breathtaking. We visited quite a few but some of our favourites were Siena, San Gimignano, and Volterra. Siena was once one of the most powerful cities in Italy during the Middle Ages. Florence (with the help of the plague) defeated Siena in the 1500's and it has never regained its former glory. The historic centre is a UNESCO Heritage site (kind of like the rest of Italy seems to be) and it is easy to see why. The Piazza del Campo is a very large town square where the Palio horse races are run twice a year (not while we were there) and is home to the marble Fountain of Joy. At one point in the 1100s the city attempted to build the largest cathedral in the world. The money ran out about two hundred years later (sounds like an early EURO crisis) and this resulted in them only building a modestly humongous Siena Cathedral. We loved the uniqueness of this 'zebra' Duomo from its marble mosaic floor to its St. Paul statue by Michelangelo. (It is hard to find a cathedral without some famous work by some famous Renaissance artist.) Our favourite part of the cathedral was the Piccolomini Library with its stunning frescoes which tell the story of Siena's favourite son who became Pope Pius III in very colourful detail. Catherine of Siena is one of the two patron saints of Italy together with St. Francis of Assisi. She is everywhere in this city and is credited with healing the schism between the two popes in the 1300s.

San Gimignano is a very imposing sight with its fourteen towers looking down on the town. There were once over seventy of these towers which were built by families trying to protect themselves from rivals (this was before the invention of backyard fences). After the Black Death killed half of the people, Florence was able to conquer the town and break down many of the towers. This left the town stuck in a medieval state which eventually led to it being turned into a tourist mecca because of its remaining towers. We drove east from San Gimignano and discovered Volterra, another town perched on a hill overlooking the countryside. This town also had some Roman ruins that were quite impressive (we hadn't visited Rome yet). Driving through Tuscany is a journey of discovery as one hilltop view leads to another with many of them crowned with a beautifully maintained town or city.