A voyage into medieval architecture, into the memory of a remote time preserved in stone for centuries and centuries, where we are taken back to the daily life, economy, and culture of the Middle Ages. In the last centuries of the Middle Ages the intensification of commerce and the multiplication of long-distance pilgrimages, mostly toward Rome, favored the economic development of Siena and San Gimignano. The social rise of the merchant class, the subversion of traditional political powers in favor of local city governments with wider representative participation among the citizens, and a new well being determined a robust construction of towers, churches, streets, and palaces. And all in the context of an extremely beautiful natural stetting, undulating softly between hills and valleys of infinite poetry, where the light fades delicately, dissolving at the height of the cypresses. Despite the original function of these places put to the test by the daily arrival of thousands of visitors, it is still possible in these little cities and in the Tuscan countryside to experience a remote harmony between culture and nature, between man's time and the earth's time.

San Gimignano: historical reflections
There are cities that spread out along Mediterranean coasts like frothy waves
stretched into low white cottages by the sea, there are cities that climb up mountainsides in hives of stone stacked one on the other, and there are cities like San Gimignano founded on the heights that compete with the cypresses to touch the sky. This is San Gimignano's vocation, though it seems difficult to imagine what the character of the city was, difficult to evince from the nature of these spaces some kind of feeling for the people who lived there. Might its verticality be spiritual? Frankly, no and it does not seem so. Might it be an architecture of defense? An impenetrable structure closed off toward the heights to limit danger? It is possible, but this was not particularly a period of wars and invasions. The 13th century, the golden age of the city in which the rich lords from the countryside moved into the city and erected tall, towered residences makes one think rather of an aesthetic of power, a will to predominate, to affirm one's self on the horizon of the city. One goes upward to seek relevance, prestige, and power.

The history of San Gimignano, from its beginnings as a small anonymous town, took off in the 11th century thanks to its location on the via Francigena, the road that began in Canterbury, England and carried pilgrims to Rome. But the road brought more than just friars, cardinals, and faithful laymen; an ever- increasing number of merchants with their loads of goods traveled across Europe on this road as well. Soon San Gimigano became a mandatory stop for long-distance travelers and it was not by chance that the bishop of Sigeric, famous for his diary written along the way, stopped here on his way back from Rome for a meeting with the pope in 994. The city grew rich in a short time thanks to the industriousness of the citizens. In the 13th century it was a very active center where the cultivation of saffron prospered—a plant indispensable to dyeing fabric and wool, a principal commerce at the time. Mulberry, needed for the production of silk, was also cultivated. There were many shops for leather working, for ceramics, glass, iron and copper. Above all, Vernaccia, the typical white wine produced to this day only here, was made in large quantities and exported even beyond the Alps. With the formation in 1199 of the first city government led by a mayor, the city took a step in its emancipation, emerging from centuries of control by the bishop to form a government of representatives, in which the merchants, the emerging class, participated. Under the new administration, San Gimignano grew still more and in the 13th century over 70 towers sprang up toward the skies, often backing up to one another. In this period and until the middle of the 14th century the city was flooded in luxury. Women showed off such exaggerated trains of precious fabrics that the city was induced to limit their length to a maximum of 5 1/2 feet, but nothing could stop the outrageous ostentation of precious stones and pearls by the ladies of San Gimignano.

Decline, however, was around the corner and by the 15th century epidemics, internecine struggles between various families, submission to Florence, and a new course for the via Francigena at the bottom of the valley all worked to cast San Gimignano into the shadows of history by the 16th century. And in the shadows of its tall towers San Gimigano has thus carried on through the centuries, in the regular succession of the days, in the abundant flowering of its fields, overflowing with poppies, grain, primroses, and sunflowers, up until its modern rediscovery

San Gimignano: the visit
We will make a complete visit of the little city and its walls, we will pass through its streets and alleys, art studios and wine shops. Walking through these sunny alleys and climbing its uphill streets, we will stop in two piazzas: Piazza Duomo with a beautiful romanesque church of the Collegiata, from the 12th century that houses frescoes by many tuscan artists including the Creation of the World by Bartolo di Fredi, The Last Judgement by Taddeo di Bartolo (whose image of hell does not spare us a terrifying vision of eternal torture), and the scenes of the Life of Santa Fina by Domenico Ghirlandaio in a chapel dedicated to that saint—a little Renaissance masterpiece. The other piazza is the piazza of the Cistern from the 13th century with a well in the center for which the site is named. The space retains its original triangular form and slight uphill inclination, and the enchanted houses and towers that face the piazza, and even the cobblestones in a herringbone pattern are all original.

The last stop will be at the ancient Rocca, or fortress. The site is beautiful, with a grove of olive trees encircled by age-old defense walls, which in springtime are covered with wisteria. The 360º panorama over the whole city, the chorus of its towers, the tuscan hills that loose themselves in the carpet of sky at the horizon will lift your spirits high, very high, higher than the towers.

Siena: historical reflections
There are cities that run long and narrow by the sea, backing up to the mountains, in spits of earth seemingly designed for them. There are cities that are daughters of rivers, growing up at those points along the course of the river where it is calm and flat and easier to cross. There are cities that rise on high impenetrable plains that dominate entire valleys, where a temple or a cathedral stands, and there are cities that have valleys for gatherings of the people, for mass celebrations in which the people unite for holidays, to celebrate victories or mourn defeats, to exalt life and confront death. Cities like Siena have both: The Duomo, or cathedral, on the heights, the oldest site, the religious altar of the city, and its oldest political power. There is also the Campo, the grand open space, the political center of the autonomous city in which the Government of the Nine created an institution of representatives from the merchant class to lead the city. The new space was begun as a market that then assumed a political dimension and to this end the seat of the government was constructed, with its fulcrum on the Palazzo Pubblico. Though neither of these is strongly connected to the organic settlement of the city nor to its defense because Siena is above all the daughter of a highway, the daughter of commerce and culture, the daughter of the via Francigena—the road that became the safest connection between the center of Europe, the North of Italy, and Rome after the Lombard invasion of northern Italy at the beginning of the 7th century.

The demographic, economic, and political development of Siena between the 11th and 13the centuries was strongly determined by its placement on one of the largest arteries of communication in the Middle Ages. From the middle of 12th century political power, which had been in the hands of the bishop, was entrusted to a college of consuls. Meanwhile the rapid mercantile expansion and the creation of a local mint are clear signs of the Sienese desire for autonomy and new republican institutions. To this same period we date some other significant events: the acts of subordination in which the various landholding lords in countryside were held to process into the city to the Duomo on the Feast of the Assumption on August 15, to make an offering of costly candles to the Madonna. They did so under the vigilant gaze of the city authorities, thus recognizing the sovereignty of the city government. This is also the occasion in which a Palio, or cloak made of precious fabric, was offered to the Virgin, and was consigned to the winner of a horse race organized through the streets of the city.

The government of the consuls, however, represented only the aristocracy of the city and soon was replaced by the government of the mayor in which the emerging classes also participated: above all the bankers, but also the merchants (both wholesale and direct), artisans including the butchers, the metalworkers, the makers of the calze, or knitted trousers, the wool makers, and the silk makers. It was the primarily the Sienese bankers who marked the fortune of the city; their entrepreneurial operations of lending, currency exchange, and deposits projected Siena into the category of the most active European economic centers. Some of them even managed to obtain the position of "Campsores Domini Pape," or those in charge of investing the Pope's income, and speculating on the exchange, they accumulated fortunes. Meanwhile Siena became famous at the beginning of the 12th century for the formation of schools of law, medicine, and subsequently other sciences that then converged to form a University of masters and pupils.

The city grew from 15,000 inhabitants in the first half of the 12th century, doubling in size by the middle of the 13th century, to arrive at 50,000 around the 1320s to 1330s. This is the golden age of the city. It begins only after a bloody battle in 1260 with their historical antagonist, Florence that left a thousand dead, and is heralded by the installation of the Government of the Nine in 1287. The government was entrusted to the merchants of the city, and expressly excluded aristocrats, notaries, judges, men of arms, and even doctors. Under the Government of the Nine the city prospered, the Campo, the Palazzo Pubblico, the Torre del Mangia, and the Duomo, were all constructed. As proclaimed by the fresco in the Hall of Peace in the Palazzo Comunale by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in 1338 depicting the theme of Good Government, this was an age of many achievements, despite the fact that the image was clearly propagandistic. Objectives such as the development of the Hospital of Saint Mary, a hostel for the pilgrims, the poor, and the sick, the improvement of the streets, the pacification of the diverse factions within the city, and the commission of many great artworks by the major artists of the time were all realized.

The decline of Siena began with the terrible plague of 1348 that reduced the population by half and with fratricidal internal struggles. The city was occupied by the Spanish troops of the emperor Charles V in the beginning of the 16th century and definitively brought under the dominance of Florence governed by the Medici dynasty. As the city was dying, loosing the vitality it formerly had, it was the Medici themselves that sought to highlight its historical character, promoting a revival of popular festivals. Thus the Palio, the famous race in the main piazza of the Campo, in which the horses represent the districts of the city, became from the 17th century increasingly the symbol of Siena, a distracted memory of its medieval traditions.

Siena: the visit
In our visit to Siena we will let ourselves be guided by its maze of timeless streets taking us to a secret fountain, an ancient fork in the road, a small church, and the two large piazzas. More than anywhere else, the city is to be found in the flavor of its little side streets—nearly all of them perfectly preserved—in their unpredictable course, in the antique inscriptions, in the small iron rings attached for centuries to the facades of the palaces in accordance with the habit of hitching the horses there. Piazza del Campo is an extraordinary space, concave and encircled almost uninterruptedly by beautiful palaces, yet open and raised upward by its very particular uphill inclination. It is a space that draws us down into its center, into its belly in the shape of an inverted shell. Yet simultaneously we are suspended and sent back upwards, perhaps because of an indescribable pull by the very tall slender tower and the Palazzo Pubblico. The Piazza del Campo is the symbol of the independent city, of the republican form of government in which a large number of the citizens participated, gathering here not only for the business of the market but also to take part in the political life of the city. We will discuss the architectural style of the Palazzo Pubblico, whose construction began at the end of the 13th century, the resemblance of this palazzo to the Palazzo of the Signoria in Florence, the laws from 1297 that mandated that the houses facing the piazza have only a particular form of double- or triple-arched window, and the significance of the Torre del Mangia.

Piazza Duomo by contrast is an irregular space, though it too is based on a counterbalance of elements coming together over time. To the powerful original structure of the cathedral, a revetment of white and black marble were added in the 13th century as was the facade of notable height—but a height that is compact, elegant and solid in its decoration of the portals by Giovanni Pisano. We will thoroughly cover the singular aspects of this Duomo including its combination of heterogeneous elements, its beautiful facade, the infinite richness of its interior, the architectural conception of its spaces, and its pavement, which is unique in the world and made of marble intarsia, or inlay. Finally, we will dedicate ourselves to the appreciation of the diverse masterpieces within the building, considering the various passages from Medieval to Renaissance art as we observe the new modeling of the figure and the search for volume and corporeality in a three-dimensional space. From the pulpit by Nicola Pisano to the Funerary monument of Cardinal Petroni by Tino Di Camaino, from the forceful and expressive bronze statue of St. John the Baptist by Donatello (from the same period as the Magdalene in the Uffizi * nella Firenze piu' amata, La Maddalena sta nel museo dell' opera del duomo), to the adorable bronze angels that carry the candelabra of Beccamufi, from the famous Renaissance frescoes by Pinturicchio in the Piccolomini Library to the Baroque statues of St. Jerome and Mary Magdalene by Bernini the journey will be marked by art.

We will end with a short walk to the hill where the Basilica of San Domenico rises. It was built in the 13the century, just a few years after the first Dominican convent in Tuscany had sprung up here shortly after the death of the saint. It is a place permeated with silence and poetry in which our visit will come full circle. From here we can in fact extend our gaze again across the magnificent Tuscan landscape that we will have admired elsewhere, but at this point the visible horizons will be enriched by the presence of the men and women that traversed them, inhabited and loved them through centuries and centuries.