In Italian mid-13th century communes, the number and height of towers were a good indicator of the wealth of the place. In fact, although we could think of them as mere castellated defensive structures, they became from a certain moment on the prerogative of noble families. Basically, the tower-house was conceived, a housing type exclusive to the most powerful families. Tower-houses were erected within the city center. They had the function of making manifest the power and wealth of its owners. The higher the building rose to the sky, the more the coat of arms of a certain noble house soared. Since there were many aristocratic families in a village, sometimes this resulted in a real competition for the tallest tower. This is why, not infrequently, communes had to deliberate limits.
Over the following centuries many of the urban fabric of Medieval Italian villages changed profoundly. Of the tower-houses that adorned the town centers, only a small number survive. They are in those places that time, earthquakes, wars, and reconstructions have failed to undermine. Among these there is one in particular, San Gimignano in Tuscany. It still gives a very realistic glimpse of what a town in the Middle Ages was to appear like.
The village on the Via Francigena
Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury, after making a pilgrimage to Rome, noted in his travel diary the 79 places at which he had obtained hospitality1. Thus, in 990 he left us a vivid snapshot of that route called the Via Romea or Francigena that allowed people to reach the tomb of Peter2. From here many continued to Apulia and embarked for Jerusalem.
Among the stages Sigeric kept track of along the way, there was one called Sce Gemiane, located at a relief known as Monte della Torre. On that hill, set to guard the road and the pleasant landscapes of Val d’Elsa, stood a fortification belonging to the bishop of Volterra, Adalardo, as attested by a donation from the king of Italy Hugh of Provence in 9293. The document reports that the castle was “prope Sancto Geminiano adiacente“: in fact, just downstream stood the village, which we have mention of in 9494. At that time, the town of San Gimignano was surrounded by a first fortified wall with three main entrance gates5.
The birth of the free Commune
Being located along the Via Francigena, the town of San Gimignano could take advantage of trade opportunities. The fertile lands around were used for the production of commodities highly requested by merchants, such as saffron. Hence, it soon attained considerable wealth, which in the mid-12th century permitted the town to free itself from Volterra bishopric. With the appointment of four local consuls, in fact, in 1147 San Gimignano assumed full control of its territory6. Just the following year the town’s cathedral, the Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta, was consecrated with the revealing label of “People’s Pieve” in the presence of Pope Eugene III7. This was the birth of the free Commune, which nevertheless saw the election of the first podestà in 1199.
The town of San Gimignano then experienced a period of rapid expansion that saw the development of the two hamlets of San Giovanni and San Matteo outside the walls. An extension interested the early 10th-century wall. In the Statute of 1255 we find evidence that a new urban layout, including a new perimeter fortification, had been under way for several decades.8. In 1239 work began on the reconstruction of the old Palazzo del Podestà in its present form.
Guelphs and Ghibellines
Nonetheless, this will had to contend with internal conflicts among the borough’s families. Historically, the government of San Gimignano was led by the Ghibelline faction. This was often aligned with the politics of neighboring Siena to counter Florence. In the early 13th century new riots led the Ghibellines, headed by Ardinghelli family, to assault the dwellings of the Guelphs Salvucci. Such discord continued for decades until the city ended up under siege by Florence, called by them to the rescue. The enemies destroyed the recently built walls, and only in 1261, a year after the Sienese victory at Montaperti, they could be rebuilt9. The new layout, which also incorporated Monte della Torre and the high ground of Montestaffoli, is what we observe today.
The town of San Gimignano and its towers
San Gimignano’s flourishing economy, due to the proximity of the Via Francigena and its trade, enriched the local nobility. It manifested its social power through the construction of imposing tower-houses. Of the original seventy-two tower-houses in San Gimignano, fourteen survive today, still a considerable number.
The Torre Rognosa and the prohibition of the Podesta
These include the Torre Rognosa, which rises from the Old Palace of the Podestà with its fifty-two meters in height. The structure, erected around 1200, owes its name to its use as a prison. The Torre Rognosa was for a long time the highest tower in the town because the Podestà, in order to limit competition among noble families, imposed in 1255 that its height should not be exceeded10. Although with difficulty, the ban was enforced for the two towers of the Salvucci family, dated in those years, and for those of the Ardinghelli family in Piazza della Cisterna. The prohibition was also being strictly observed by ordering the demolition of the meters exceeding the legal threshold.
In any case, by around 1300 the issue was probably no longer so relevant. The Podestà himself had the fifty-four-meter Torre Grossa erected. The building stands today next to Palazzo Nuovo, formerly Palazzo del Popolo, in Piazza Duomo. A barrel-vaulted corridor with hanging arches supporting a summit parapet characterized at the base Torre Grossa.
The other towers of San Gimignano
Still overlooking Piazza Duomo is Torre Chigi, with the lower part covered in stone and the upper part in brick. Close to Arco dei Becci, the southern gate of the 10th-century city wall, stand Becci Tower, Cugnanesi Tower and Campitelli Tower. Also of note are the towers of Palazzo Pellari, Pettini and Ficarelli. On the Torre del Diavolo in Piazza della Cisterna, however, there is a curious legend. The owner, returning from a long journey, found it taller than it was at the time of his departure. He attributed this artifice to an intervention of the devil. On the ground floor, the Tower opens through a double portal. At one time this passageway provided access to the street of the goldsmiths. Above, however, a series of corbels suggest that there was a wooden gallery.
The church of Saint Francis and the knights orders in San Gimignano
Towers dominate the urban center of San Gimignano, capturing the attention of the visitor who turns his gaze upward. But the walls of the village hide other treasures: they are those of history and symbolism. Walking along Via San Giovanni, there is the facade of a church, but what a church it no longer is. In 1787 a private individual bought Saint Francis, a 13th-century house of worship and a dispensary of the Hospitallers of Saint John, demolishing it. Only its facade is intact.11.
The church of Saint Francis in the town of San Gimignano
The church had a single rectangular hall, not apsidal, covered by wooden beams. Of the original Romanesque facade, of Pisan inspiration, only the lower portion covered with travertine blocks survives. Two bands of gabbro intersperse the elevation. Five blind arches, supported by small columns with capitals, punctuate the facade. At the level of the central arch is the entrance portal, not without symbolism. One of the impost ashlars of the archivolt has a ram’s head carved on it: as the animal offered by the Lord in place of Isaac, so Christ sacrificed himself for all humanity. Interestingly, Aries is also the first constellation of the Zodiac. The sign introduces spring and, figuratively, the rebirth of the cosmos.
A rope bounds the arch of the intrados. The knots placed at the level of the belt course, now at the top of the facade, recall its meaning. The symbolic motif alludes to the bond between God and man, God providing grace and protection from the perils of travel to pilgrims in transit on the Via Francigena. Next to the knots, on the side-by-side ashlars, are symbols with Christological significance: some five-petaled flowers and the vesica piscis. In the center of the portal lunette is the cross of the Hospitallers of Saint John, now the Knights of Malta.
San Jacopo al Tempio
This was not the only monastic-chivalric order present in San Gimignano in the Middle Ages. In fact, the church of San Jacopo al Tempio, built near the town gate of the same name, belonged to the Knights Templar.
The Templars had to establish a mansio there from the beginning of the 13th century, with the intention of assisting pilgrims passing along the Francigena. Of it we have got a first attestation in a document dated July 122112, which reports the presence of a hospitale de Templo. Nothing more remains in San Gimignano of that Order, tragically dissolved in 1312, except a cross pattée on the lintel of San Jacopo. This is a clue to a glorious and lost past.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Map of places
Notes
- Sigeric’s Itinerary, British Library, London, catalogued as MS Cotton Tiberius B. V, ff. 23v – 24r. ↩︎
- In the Actum Clusio of 876, preserved at Abbazia di San Salvatore, the words “via Francigena” appear for the first time. ↩︎
- Regestum Volaterranum, 20, Pavia, 30 Agosto 929 in F. Schneider, Regestum Volaterranum, Roma, 1907. ↩︎
- Regestum Volaterranum, 30, Volterra, September 949: “[…] et res pertinentes plebe ecclesia S. Johanni prope burgo Sancti Geminiani in Marciniano”. ↩︎
- R. Razzi, San Gimignano e le sue mura, San Gimignano, 2020. ↩︎
- E. Fiumi, San Gimignano, Olschki, Firenze, 1961. ↩︎
- L. Pecori, Storia di San Gimignano, Firenze, 1853. ↩︎
- S. Diacciati, L. Tanzini, Lo statuto di San Gimignano del 1255, Firenze, Olschki, 2016. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 6. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 8. ↩︎
- R. Stopani, Chiese medievali della Valdelsa. I territori della via Francigena tra Siena e San Gimignano, Empoli, Editori dell’Acero, 1996. ↩︎
- Ibidem. ↩︎
