Il Dolce Viaggio: Volterra and San Gimignano

We were now in the final week of our six week journey and we had already visited more than enough markets. The weekly versions had been mostly disappointing with a heavy emphasis on clothing and other dry goods and very repetitive with respect to food. Although I give Italy a slight edge over France as my favorite European country for travel, there's no competition with the French when it comes to markets. Nevertheless we still structured our daily itineraries around morning markets when we could, partly in the hope of finding that rare diamond and partly because it gave us motivation to pack up and leave town as early as possible.

Saturday is the best bet for an Italian market so we had high hopes as we departed Florence for Volterra. In the interest of time we took the autostradale but it was still a ninety minute drive and it was already eleven by the time we finally reached our destination. The roads around the old city were very congested and parking was a tortuous process but we eventually found a spot. We took the elevator up a level to the pedestrian tunnel that led to the old town. Someone had thoughtfully placed a bench outside the tunnel that was designed to look like a cloud, although it wasn't anywhere near as soft as it appeared.

Once we were inside the medieval section of town I realized that Volterra was a much more significant city than I had realized. If it wasn't for the Saturday market it probably wouldn't have been on our itinerary at all so once again luck had worked in our favor. Volterra was once an important Etruscan metropolis before it fell into the hands of the Romans, but medieval and Renaissance societies built over and destroyed most of the structures of those eras. Volterra had that classic Italian medieval atmosphere with continuous lines of tall stone and brick buildings keeping the narrow flagstone streets in perpetual shade. The city was quite crowded and popular so clearly I was in the minority who hadn't been previously familiar with it.

Our top priority was to get something to eat at a rotisserie truck at the weekly market. My notes indicated that we would find the market in Piazza dei Priori, the main square, but when we arrived we only found a crafts market with no produce or cooked food anywhere in sight. We had been stymied before by errors on websites about markets that proved to be illusory but this one was particularly frustrating. I asked a couple of locals if there was another market for food but they said they only knew about the one we had already found. Fortunately there was no shortage of panini shops in the vicolos around the piazza and we were able to settle the issue of our rumbling stomachs fairly easily.

The lady who made our paninis advised us that the weekly food market was in the parking lot at the base of the hill next to the Roman theater. This ruin was likewise buried over the centuries following the Roman empire's decline but it was discovered and excavated in the 1950's, leaving a scalloped depression in the adjoining ridge. Despite being one of the best-preserved Roman theaters the park in which it sits appears somewhat neglected. We decided against paying the admission for the park as we could see the ruins perfectly well from the adjacent path. A stage and some rows of seats had been placed in the center of the park, perhaps for some upcoming musical performance. The weekly market was indeed in the large lot next to the ruins whose closure likely accounted for our earlier difficulties with parking. It was a decent-sized market but as usual was largely devoted to dry goods with a very limited selection of produce. There was a rotisserie and we got enough rabbit and chicken to tide us over through dinner.

Now that we had resolved the nagging issue of the missing market we returned to the old town to complete our exploration. It was a quite enjoyable city to walk through with a variety of boutiques and gourmet stores. The local specialty in craftmanship is sculpture with alabaster using techniques that originated with the Etruscans. Alabaster is a general term for two disparate materials, gypsum and calcite, that have similar appearance and properties. The gypsum variety is mined extensively in the mountains around Volterra and stunning examples of alabaster sculpture can be found in large galleries around the city.

Volterra's medieval city is small enough to cover in a couple of hours and we did a good job of strolling the majority of its streets. One high point was a balcony with views over the Val d'Elsa and clusters of densely packed stone buildings that extended down the hillside.

When we had first arrived in Volterra we had come across a fish market with a little restaurant inside. Ian is the seafood lover of the three kids and had asked if we could try some of food there but in our rush to locate the market we had brushed him off. I felt guilty about it afterwards because of the three Ian asks for the least and never complains when his needs are overlooked, so I took him back to the restaurant and hooked him up with some clams and seafood stew while the others waited outside.

On the way back out of Volterra we stopped at a large ring which had been placed on the grass inside a hairpin loop in the road that ascended to the city. We had seen people taking photographs here on our way in and now it was thankfully free of visitors. There was no indication of who had placed the sculpture there or what it was called but it seemed obvious that its purpose was to frame the landscape and naturally we took advantage of the opportunity. Later I learned that the ring is (unsurprisingly) called l'Anello and was built by a Volterran sculptor named Mauro Staccioli. A local farmer had established a small fruit stand in the parking area near the ring and Mei Ling was negotiating with him on some peaches. When I had climbed back up to the car he insisted that I try one of his crab apples. As I turned it over absent-mindedly I saw that a worm had drilled a hole neatly through its center. Meanwhile the farmer was explaining the local volcanic landscape with some animation. As he turned away to point out some distant fumarole I heaved the perforated apple as far as I could into the underbrush. I don't think he noticed Cleo's giggling as he finalized the peach sale with Mei Ling.

We had passed Colle di Val d'Elsa on the way to Volterra but hadn't had time to stop. This was the perfect moment to remedy that omission and we drove a half hour east to the breathtaking medieval town called Colle Alta that extended for a kilometer along a high, narrow ridge well above its modern additions, known as Colle Bassa.

We easily found the parking lot designated for outsiders and followed a grassy footpath under an old stone bridge that appeared to double as an art gallery. Some of the archways were enclosed in glass and contained complicated branching sculptures of metal. The path took a hairpin turn and brought us to a traffic circle around an ancient brick well at the western edge of the ridge.

We could see two streets extending eastward into what appeared to be the old town. The main street was lined on either side by solid walls of well-maintained townhouses with plaster facades. The other street coursed along the edge of the ridge and gave us a view of the rest of Colle Alta as the ridge curved slightly to the north.

About halfway to the other end of the ridge we came to a beautiful bridge that was paved with diagonal flagstones in varying shades of grey and beige. On the other side was a magnificent mansion that spanned the ridge transversely and contained a central archway through which the road continued. We realized now that there was an even older old town in Colle di Val d'Elsa as the plaster facades had now largely vanished in favor of bare, occasionally crumbly blocks of irregular stone.

In this area of town we found the belltower which sits between the Palazzo Pretorio and the somewhat understated San Marziale cathedral. Both the tower of the palazzo and that of the cathedral had recently been destroyed at the time the belltower was constructed and it is unclear from the archives which of these structures the current seventeenth century belltower was built to replace. Between the world wars the tower held political prisoners who left behind graffiti declaring their opposition to Fascism. Further along we strolled through the attractive Piazza Canonica with a bronze bust of one of the town's most prominent natives, the medieval architect Arnolfo di Cambio.

Colle di Val d'Elsa was a marked contrast to Volterra in terms of how few pedestrians we came across in the few streets. We practically had the place to ourselves which gave the town a completely different atmosphere. This seemed to be the normal state of affairs as there were relatively few cafes and commercial establishments here compared to Volterra. We did come across one gallery that I found particularly interesting which specialized in ceramic plates and jugs that were painstakingly hand-painted with colorful Tuscan landscapes. I stepped inside and found a craftsman working on a series of plates while consulting a photograph on his phone. There a few things I find more fascinating than watching an artist or craftsman at work.

At the very end of the town there was a spacious piazza called Il Baluardo, the bulwark. The only structure here was the top of the shaft of the elevator that was built to connect the centro storico on the ridge with the modern town underneath. Unfortunately the elevator was out of service and we had to content ourselves with looking out over the rooftops of Colle Bassa. I would have liked to walk around the Piazza Arnolfo di Cambio below us and get some sense of the atmosphere of the lower town but it would have been too time-consuming and exhausting to climb down and then back up the long series of stairs.

The older half of Colle Alta had three parallel streets rather than two so there was a little more wandering to be done before we stopped at a cafe at Piazza San Caterina for refreshments. The cafe had more than a dozen outdoor tables in the shade of plane trees but only a handful were occupied. The centerpiece of the piazza was an interesting fountain of relatively modern construction with a theme of steps and levels. Colle di Val d'Elsa had turned out to be one of the most beautiful and atmospheric towns we had visited thus far in Tuscany. Once again we had been very lucky to have seen it while driving on the autostradale to Volterra. The market in Volterra had been disappointing but the mission had led us to two remarkable cities that we would otherwise have missed.

The legendary medieval town of San Gimignano occupies a hilltop in the center of the Val d'Elsa. Despite its small size San Gimignano is a must see in Tuscany due to its fourteen oblong towers, the surviving remnants of a forest of seventy-two towers that once dominated the city center. San Gimignano also began its existence as an Etruscan settlement but the known history of the town does not begin until the tenth century. Like many Tuscan cities it grew in importance during the High Middle Ages due to its proximity to the Via Francigena. It is not known how the practice of building towers in San Gimignano began but it soon became a contest among the nobility and the wealthiest merchant families to build the highest tower. The strongest rivalry was between the local factions of the Guelphs (papists) and the Ghibellines (imperialists). Eventually the town council passed a law that no new private tower could be built taller than the Torre Rognosa, the tower of the old town hall that is still standing to this day.

The parking situation at San Gimignano was thankfully a little more organized than it had been in Volterra. We entered the old town via the Porta San Jacopo to the north and made our way to Via San Matteo, the longest street in the centro storico. It felt like we were looking straight down the barrel of the city towards a cluster of the skyscraper-like towers. I had thought it would be fun not to tell anyone about the towers and let them be a surprise but Mei Ling and the kids barely blinked when they came into sight. I suppose after so many weeks of travel they'd already become a little jaded about new variations on the medieval theme.

Via San Matteo brought us right into Piazza del Duomo. In this piazza stands the Torre Grossa, the tallest of all the towers and the one exception to the Torre Rugnosa rule. This fifty-four meter tower was allowed to exceed the limit because it was built by the municipal authorities as part of the new town hall, the Palazzo Comunale. Adjacent to the palazzo is San Gimignano's cathedral, Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta, whose belltower is sometimes counted among the surviving towers of the city. Several other towers were scattered around the immediate periphery of the piazza. A short passageway led to the adjacent square, Piazza della Cisterna, named for the thirteenth century well in its center. A long line of tourists was dutifully waiting at Gelateria Dondoli, billed as the best gelato in the world, but I couldn't imagine what bells and whistles a gelato might have to make someone wait on line for a half hour instead of exploring the town.

The towers were visible from any of the side streets around the central piazzas. Although their heights and crests and numbers of windows varied slightly it was interesting how uniform they were in shape and design. There were still remnants of prior towers that had been cut down until their profiles mingled with the adjacent buildings. It must have been quite interesting to have lived during that era to witness this manifestation of familial rivalries. I tried to imagine what the city might have looked like with the full complement of seventy-two towers but it just boggled by imagination.

The downside of San Gimignano was that it was the most heavily commercialized small town we had come across on this trip. It was like a miniature version of the San Marco neighborhood of Venice or the Pigna area of Rome. The major streets were filled with souvenir stores, crummy cafes, cheap pizzerias, and every other conceivable establishment for extracting money out of profligate tourists. Towns like Portofino and Cinque Terre certainly had their share of tourist traps but here it seemed excessive and tacky, and it detracted from the dignified atmosphere created by the towers. However we did find some diamonds in the rough, most notably a beautiful cheese shop with endless varieties of pecorino stacked in wooden shelves and a salumeria with two stuffed boars standing guard in the doorway.

We walked down Via San Giovanni all the way to the St. John Gate at the opposite end of the town from where we had entered. On one of the side streets near here we found a spacious balcony with perfect vistas over the idyllic Val d'Elsa. It was a pleasant respite from the crowds and commercialism of the old town. We didn't much consideration to staying in San Gimignano for dinner and soon enough we were back in our car on our way to our next home base in Siena.