San Gimignano
— the towers that outlived their century.
Not only on a wall.
“Fourteen stone towers above the Val d'Elsa, surrounded by vineyards that make Vernaccia, Italy's first DOC white wine. The skyline reads as medieval Manhattan to most visitors who arrive from the Siena road, a silhouette that should have fallen and didn't. The town held seventy-two towers in 1300; what's left has held its place for seven centuries. UNESCO inscribed the historic centre in 1990. The afternoon light moves slowly across the stone, the way light only moves in places that have stopped changing. People come on day trips from Florence. The towers wait.
San Gimignano, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
San Gimignano sits on a hilltop in the Val d'Elsa, in the Province of Siena, about 56 km south of Florence and 38 km northwest of Siena. The historic centre rises to roughly 324 metres above sea level, on a ridge that once controlled the medieval pilgrim road, the Via Francigena, between Canterbury and Rome. The town's wealth was built on that traffic: saffron, banking, and the patrician families who taxed the pilgrims as they passed. UNESCO inscribed the historic centre in 1990 as a Cultural World Heritage Site, citing the surviving tower-houses and the intact medieval street plan. The nearest train station is Poggibonsi-San Gimignano, eleven kilometres east, with a connecting bus.
At the height of San Gimignano's wealth around 1300, the town held seventy-two tower-houses. Fourteen remain. The towers were built by rival patrician families as private fortresses and visible signs of wealth, each family raising its tower higher than the next, until municipal law forbade any private tower from exceeding the Palazzo Comunale's. Torre Grossa, completed in 1311, stands 54 metres and remains the tallest. The Black Death of 1348 killed roughly half the population and ended the building competition; the town fell under Florentine rule in 1353 and never recovered its medieval prominence. The stone is the colour of bone and honey in the afternoon sun.
San Gimignano is reached from Florence by car in about an hour, or by train from Florence Santa Maria Novella to Poggibonsi-San Gimignano, eleven kilometres east, then a connecting SITA bus. The town is small enough to walk in a half day; the Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta holds the most important fresco cycles, by Bartolo di Fredi and Domenico Ghirlandaio. Climb Torre Grossa for the view back across the towers and the Tuscan countryside. The town fills with day-trippers between mid-morning and late afternoon, then empties again at dusk. Most coach traffic comes from Florence and Siena; the quieter hours are before ten and after six. Saffron is the local crop; Vernaccia is the local wine.