Good morning! And another beautiful day it is.
I'm in the town of San Gimignano
with an amazing view
a beautiful day. I don't know if you
hear... crickets and insects singing the birds
are tweeting
so let's go and explore this little town.
Now this little town is famous in Italy
for being sometimes called the idyllic
Italian Tuscany town and it
really has an amazing location built on a hill it
was a medieval walled fortress town
with some very well-preserved towers in the
middle now the towers were merchant towers
and the height of the towers was
a sign of your wealth
at one point there was 72 of these tall towers built in the
city
now, or I say city, village, town
now 14 have been preserved which is that
I think the highest number of any place in Italy a lot of the other places Wars
and Urban Renewal have actually got rid of a lot of the towers but the skyline
of San Gimignano is now famous for these fantastic tall towers that dominate the
centre of the village.
It's a wonderful place to walk around it's not
very big
it's very user friendly
it is quite touristy and if you go in the height of
summer there's lots of activities there's orchestras choirs dancing but
there's still a nice atmosphere there so
take a wander through the streets absorb
the atmosphere sit on one of the many
piazzas and enjoy the views of the
towers imagine the history that has gone
through here it was almost like an
independent town a bit like Siena at one
point but when the Black Death swept
Europe pretty much half of the
population of the village died and it
came under the rule of Florence like
most of Tuscany did and you can see
influences in the architecture from the
Romanesque era right through to the
Florentine times
but after that and after the Black Death
it didn't really grow that much sort of
faded out of history the towers crumbled
and has now got its Renaissance
its second Renaissance as an excellent
tourist place to visit and it
is nice to visit although as I say
it can get a bit crowded and it's a little bit
expensive but go, enjoy, absorb.
It's got the evening
we've had a great walk around the
town see some music seen
the sights
now it's time to sit here and
have some proper food I've ordered beef and Chianti.
Well that was a delicious meal
I'm so full now but it was really nice one of
the nicest meals I have had
but now there's some events
on this evening so I'm looking forward
to them then I'm going to go home,
charge some batteries
come back after dark