San Gimignano

In the 3rd century BC a small Etruscan village stood on the hill. Local tradition holds that the place took its present name in 450 AD, after Bishop Geminianus of Modena intervened to spare it from the followers of Attila the Hun; a church was dedicated to him, and in the 6th and 7th centuries a walled village grew up around it. From 929 the town was ruled by the bishop of Volterra. It sat on the Via Francigena, the pilgrim road to Rome, and grew rich on the produce of the hills around it, above all saffron, used in cooking and for dyeing cloth and sold as far as France, the Low Countries, Syria and Egypt, and Vernaccia wine.

In 1199 the town freed itself from the bishops and set up its own podestà. The next two centuries were marked by the struggle between Guelphs and Ghibellines and by feuds between local families, who built ever taller tower houses; by the end of the Middle Ages there were 72, some up to 70 metres high, until the council ruled that none could top the tower beside the Palazzo Comunale. Dante visited on 8 May 1300 as an ambassador of the Guelph League.

The Black Death of 1348 killed about half the townspeople, and the weakened town submitted to Florence. Many towers were cut down to the height of the houses, and with little later building the town stayed in its medieval state until the 19th century, when it began to be valued as an artistic and tourist destination. The area was bombed by the Allies for ten days during the Second World War. Today the historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with about a dozen of its towers still standing.

San Gimignano's identity is bound up with its towers and its frescoes. The Collegiata, the Palazzo Comunale and Sant'Agostino hold frescoes and paintings by Ghirlandaio, Benozzo Gozzoli, Lippo Memmi and Pinturicchio, a wealth of art for a town of its size. Its patron is St Geminianus, but the town also honours Santa Fina, born here in 1238, whose chapel in the Collegiata carries frescoes by Ghirlandaio and whose feast falls in March. The medieval poet Folgore da San Gimignano, whose sonnets date from around 1308–1316, carries the town's name.

The towers have drawn writers and film-makers. E. M. Forster turned the town into Monteriano in his 1905 novel Where Angels Fear to Tread, M. C. Escher made a woodcut of the towers in 1923, Franco Zeffirelli filmed most of the Assisi scenes of Brother Sun, Sister Moon here, and Tea with Mussolini was shot partly in the town. A 15th-century version of it appears in the video game Assassin's Creed II.

The calendar mixes religious feasts with the Ferie delle Messi, a medieval re-enactment in mid-June, and a New Year's Eve celebration in Piazza del Duomo. The local speech, shared across the Val d'Elsa, is a blend of Florentine and Sienese dialects, a reminder of the town's changing masters. San Gimignano is twinned with Český Krumlov in the Czech Republic, Meersburg in Germany and Mestia in Georgia.

The municipality, home to 7,463 people at the end of 2025, covers some 138 square kilometres of the Val d'Elsa, rising from the plain of the Elsa river to over 600 metres. Only part of the population lives within the walls; the rest live in villages such as Badia a Elmi, the largest, Ulignano and Santa Lucia, and on farms across the hills. Foreign residents made up a little under a tenth of the population at the end of 2019.

San Gimignano is an agricultural town famous for its Vernaccia vineyards and its saffron, and tourism dominates the economy of the old centre, where wine shops, galleries and restaurants line the main streets. The daily rhythm follows the visitors: the streets fill from mid-morning as coaches and buses arrive, and empty again in the evening, when those who stay sit on the steps of the Collegiata in the quiet. Thursday is market day in the centre.

The town is run by an elected mayor and council. Andrea Marrucci, first elected in 2019, was re-elected in June 2024 with almost 85 per cent of the vote.

The town's wine is Vernaccia di San Gimignano, a white made from the old Vernaccia grape on the sandstone hillsides around the town. It was the first Italian wine to receive DOC status, in 1966, and was raised to DOCG in 1993. Shops across the old town pour it for tasting, and the municipality runs a tasting and documentation centre for it in the villa at the Rocca di Montestaffoli.

Saffron, the spice made from the dried stigmas of the saffron crocus, made the town rich in the Middle Ages and is still grown here as Zafferano di San Gimignano. The town is also known for its pecorino, a sheep's-milk cheese, and for a dry-aged ham infused with saffron, sold as Golden Ham.

The rest of the table is Tuscan. Ribollita, whose name means "reboiled", began as the previous day's vegetable soup heated up again; pici are thick hand-rolled pasta, like fat spaghetti; and wild boar and hare go into sauces for pappardelle. Desserts include cantucci, oblong almond biscuits, the chewy fruit-and-nut dessert panforte, and ricciarelli, almond biscuits made with sugar, honey and egg white.