Images of San Gimignano, Tuscany, Italy

(Roy and I were at San Gimignano, Tuscany, last month. It was a magical town. Enjoy Roy’s guest post on it)

San Gimignano, Italy’s most visited hill town is a photographer’s delight. Here are a few images to tempt you to visit if you are in Tuscany.

You enter an almost car-free zone.  Our hotel was inside the walls, so we negotiated the narrow one way streets, and piazzas full of tourists.

 

 

 

Rival families competed to build the tallest watch tower in town.  There are towers everywhere:

 

 

Towers are everywhere, but the narrow streets make them hard to see

 

 

Piazza Cisterna, San Gimignano

Piazza Cisterna is the main square in town.  The well is a focal point for tourists.

Piazza Cisterna, San Gimignano, Tuscany.

 

The home of world’s best icecream, as judged in international competition, is also here

 

Piazza Doumo, San Gimignano

Piazza Doumo, connected to Piazza Cisterna at a corner, is San Gimingano’s second central square.  The Duomo (Cathedral) is also known as the Collegiata, short for Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta.  The nave has wonderful frescoes illustrating stories from the Old and New Testaments, and history.

Bartolo di Fredi’s vision of the creation of Adam is very different from Michelangelo’s.

 Sant’ Agostino, San Gimignano, Tuscany.

Sant’Agostino is an Augustinian church and monastery in a quiet location near the walls of San Gimignano.  During the summer months it accepts pilgrims on the Via Francigena pilgrimage route from Canterbury (England) to Rome.   It contains lovely frescoes.

The fresco above is a part of a wall of frescoes:

This unusual nativity scene discovered under plaster at the back of church does not get a mention in the guide books:

Decorative touches, San Gimignano

Historic Tuscan towns frequently have this kind of hook for hitching horses and donkeys

 

On our way our we waved goodbye to this friendly dog: