Holiday apartment 901 Der Reiz des Steins (317251)

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Siena, Firenze, San Gimignano, Volterra, Monteriggioni,Chianti

Maybe the expression has been used to many times but it’s still appropriate: There’s no better comparison than calling San Gimignano, the city of hundred towers, the “Medieval Manhattan”. A kind of fortified village that, to the great joy of the visitors from all over the world, seems to have “turned to ice” in the 14th century to keep alive the miracle of an urban and architectonical structure that has remained unchanged over the centuries. In the last 25 years luck was on the side of this corner of the Sienese land: By now San Gimignano has surpassed in celebrity many bigger and more important places. It’s the home of one of the most famous and antique Tuscan wines, the only white wine which is well known all over the world: the Vernaccia. Certainly it’s not enough to mention only the inevitable comparison with Manhattan (by now there are only 18 towers left). The little town and its territory have so much more to offer. The Elsa valley, antique and very civilized land, cradle of the trade routes in this region and cradle of learning and art from the time of the High Middle Ages, rich in famous monuments, beautiful little towns and breathtaking panoramas. Let’s mention just some of them: Colle di Val d’Elsa, the city of crystal, Casole, Monteriggioni with its intact city walls that have been celebrated even in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Poggibonsi and its fortress of Poggio Imperiale, an uncountable number of Romanesque parish churches (like the one of Cellole or the extraordinary Badia a Isola), oratories, monasteries, castles and villages. All these sights are not only relics of a glorious past, but they are still a symbol of the territory’s richness which still lasts thanks to the industriousness of its people and a dense network of trades that has its origins in medieval times, when the Via Francigena ran through the Elsa valley, the road which connected the papal town of Rome with Northern Europe between the 9th and the 15th century with a steady stream of warriors, pilgrims, saints and emperors. Today we can still find some traces of this extraordinary road which explain why in the course of the centuries villages, castles, bridges and pilgrims’ hospitals have been built just where they are and not anywhere else.