10 Things To Do In San Gimignano

  

San Gimignano, the magical hilltop Tuscan town famous for its towers is my second home. With all my travels in Italy San Gimi is always home base. Arriving back there heals me, leaving there makes me a bit tearful, every time. Perched on a hill between Florence and Siena, watching over the fields  and vineyards, it is the perfect medieval town.

Piazza-Cisterna-San-Gimignano

If you find your way to beautiful San Gimignano, here are 10 things you need to do:

1. Visit the Duomo. 

the view from my apartment window, looking over the Duomo

The fresco cycles are spectacular and date back to the 13th century.

The Duomo is in the heart of town, so you can't miss it.

2. Eat an artisanal gelato. 

Late night gelato in Piazza Cisterna, San Gimignano

The gelato store in the neighboring Piazza Cisterna makes fresh gelato each day in a variety of sensational flavors. Try raspberry with rosemary, or any flavor with lavender. Actually, it's probably impossible to find a flavor that isn't fantastic. Sometimes there are lines across the piazza with locals waiting to get a scoop or two of this delicious homemade gelato.

Wander back through to Piazza Duomo and sit on the steps while you eat your gelato. Look up and you will see my apartment looking right back at you!

3. Walk down to the medieval font.

one of my travelers in June 2016 exploring the font on a rainy day

The history of this idyllic mountain town is just wonderful, and there is just so much to see. Most people don't make it down to the font. Every time I've been we are the only people down there having a look.

4. Take a stroll.

You can walk around San Gimi forever and not get bored. The light hits the walls and the towers differently every minute of the day, so it always looks new. Wander through the medieval arches and alleyways, explore the little piazze, window shop and walk from one end of town to the other. Wander off the main shopping street and explore all the little neighborhoods. This little town is magical!

wander around in the evening for a different view of the town.

5. Walk the wall.

walking along the wall in San Gimignano, summer 2016

The views from the walls of San Gimi are absolutely breathtaking. A glass of local Sangiovese in the late afternoon at one of the little restaurants along the wall, with a view of endless vineyards, olive groves and fields that have been farmed for centuries. The view is so lovely it will haunt you forever...

late afternoon glass of wine along the wall, taking in the view in San Gimignano

6. Visit iSculpture San Gimignano

This one is a fantastic find in a region full of historical sculpture my friends Francesca and Patrick have built a tremendous business and a wonderful gallery featuring only contemporary art created by Italian artists.

The works are fresh and exciting and new, and make for an all encompassing experience housed in an ancient, historical building. The gallery is deceptively huge, and is the perfect showcase for both small and gigantic pieces. It's one of those places that keeps drawing you back in.

7. Climb the rock at sunset.

The highest point of town at the San Matteo end affords you the craziest, most sensational views as the sun goes down.

8. Eat Pizza at Il Trovatore

Summer evenings spent on the patio at Il Trovatore with pizzas cooked in their giant wood burning oven and jugs of local wine just cannot be beaten.

Tuscan pizza is nothing like pizza stateside. It's fresh and light and explodes win flavor. Don't expect it to be drenched in tomato sauce and wallowing in melted cheese like it is here - this is pizza the way it was meant to be eaten.

9. Enjoy Prosecco in the Piazza

late afternoon spritz and prosecco in the Piazza Cisterna, San Gimignano

My favorite time of day is Prosecco o'clock in the piazza. That late afternoon /early evening glass of prosecco siting at one of the outdoor restaurants that line the piazza Cisterna watching the early evening light hit the walls of the palazzi, people watching as the tourists leave for the day and the locals come out.

It's absolute magic.

10. Be there for market day

buying fresh local cheeses and prosciutto at the San Gimignano market

Every Thursday San Gimi wakes up to market day. The market takes up all of the Piazza Duomo and most of Piazza Cisterna. 

the local ladies buying their fruit and vegetables at the weekly market

From local cheeses and meats to fruits and vegetables, from Italian leather handbags and belts to clothes and shoes, from housewares to fabulous Italian tablecloths and napkins, there is so much to look at and buy!

Plan on buying lunch from one of the food trucks and eating it sitting on the Duomo steps.

(The leather handbags are the same as the ones you will find in San Lorenzo market in Florence. I have always found them to be cheaper at the San Gimi market. Expect to pay between 40 and 50 euros for an incredible handbag that will last a lifetime.)

I hope you take time to visit San Gimignano - it is so lovely!

11 Things You Must Do In Matera

This past September I took my Glam Italia tour to one of the best places I have ever been. Deep in the heart of Italy's south, in the region of Basilicata there lies one of the three oldest and most continuously inhabited cities in the world, Matera.
Matera has been populated since paleolithic times.

You can read more about Matera here

Matera needs to be on your bucket list, and while there you absolutely MUST do these 11 things:

1. Walk

In order to understand this amazing city you need to walk. And walk and walk. Up and down and around the rabbit warren that is the Sassi. 

When you walk the Sassi you will discover that it is an optical illusion - it's actually quite disorienting! Things look far away, but in fact they are quite close, it's just that the Sassi is so vertical

2. Take a tour of the Sassi

You can't come all the way to Matera and not take a guided tour of the Sassi. On the Glam Italia Tours I use Antonio Manicone from Matera Tour Guide. Antonio is the top rated tour guide on Tripadvisor, and with good reason. He is fantastic! I use him for my Glam Tours and I sincerely recommend you use him too.

No guide book can give you the insight into Sassi life that a guide will give you. Antonio's grandparents lived in the Sassi until they were relocated by the government to the apartments on the other side of Matera. His stories about their life in the Sassi and the social fabric of the community brought an entirely different experience to the tour.

Without a tour it would be incredibly difficult to understand the structure of the homes, and the brilliance of the design of the communities.

You can find Antonio here

3. Visit a Rupestrian church

Santa Maria di Idris, Matera

The Rupestrian cave churches of Matera are sensational, both for their design and for the spectacular frescos inside. In a country overflowing with church art, these take you to an entirely different place. The art is largely Byzantine in style even though much of it was painted in the Middle Ages. The frescos in Santa Maria di Idris and in

will take your breath away

4. Stay in a cave hotel

Staying in a cave hotel was such a fabulous experience! We stayed at the beautiful Le Dodici Lune where the ceilings are high, the decor is beautiful and the service is wonderful.

sitting room area inside our cave hotel in Matera

Hotel specialist Alex Polizzi says that you should always know where you are when you wake in a hotel. Most hotels are very much alike and sitting inside that room you could be anywhere. When you wake in a cave hotel in Matera you know exactly where you are. And it's magical.

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5. Eat in a cave restaurant

Le Dodice Lune has a world class restaurant on the property, in yet another giant cave. The visual is fantastic, second only to the food itself. Local cuisine is fresh and flavorful, and really just sensational! 

The staircase down to the wine cellar at Le Dodici Lune in Matera

Pair it with local wines from the Basilicata for the most perfect experience ever

Book a table at Le Dodici Lune

6. Walk through the Sassi at night

The Sassi is spectacular at night. Take time to stroll through the labyrinth streets after sundown. The city shimmers like a jewelry box, and it's beautiful!

In the 17th century a man of the cloth wrote that every evening it was customary for every home to put a candle in the window. With so many doors and windows it would look like a sea of light reflected in the stars above. Dalle sassi alle stelle / from the stones to the stars

7. Cross to the other side

From the Sassi you can walk down the gorge and cross a bridge to the other side. There are caves to explore, an unobstructed view of the Sassi, and incredible views of the countryside.

8. Go to a cave house

The cave house of Vico solitaire in Sasso Caveoso gives you insight into the life of the average family living in the Sassi. This cave home housed a family of 11 and their animals. See how the cave was set up as a home, where the kitchen was, where everyone slept, where the animals lived - it's fascinating!

Train Tickets and Schedules  

9. Visit the crypt of the original sin

This is one of the best things I have ever done.

Outside of Matera in the middle of nowhere, along the wall of the Gravina di Picciano gorge you will find the Crypt Of The Original Sin, a heavily frescoed cave church that was abandoned in the late 9th century, became overgrown with moss, as was used for centuries as a shelter for shepherds. 

Rediscovered in 1963 this cave church holds a fresco cycle that comprise one of the most important examples of early medieval painting in the Mediterranean. The painter is unknown, simply referred to as the flower painter of Matera, but his work is hauntingly beautiful. 



The apses depict saints, and the entire back wall tells the story of Genesis.

If you are someone to whom art speaks, you will understand me when I tell you that when they slowly raised the light on these paintings I had tears rolling down my cheeks.

Photography is forbidden, so images have been sourced from Google. I will be writing a separate post about the crypt.

10. Explore the art galleries

Matera is a delectably artsy town, and is full of cafes, restaurants and little art shops and galleries. It has been named the European Capital of Culture for 2019. When planning your trip to Matera factor in an afternoon for aimless strolling and wander into as many local haunts as you can.

11. Visit The Palombaro Lungo

One of the things I found incredibly fascinating from Antonio's tours is the Palombaro Lungo, the largest of the sassi' incredibly clever cisterns dug to capture what rain water the area got. An intricate system of tunnels, caves and water channels captured rain water to be drinking water for the locals. Eels kept the water moving so that it didn't become stagnant and lime kept it safe to drink.

You can walk 17 meters deep into the cistern which was dug by hand into the rock.

Discovering Matera ~ Into The Sassi

People with an interest in Italian travel generally  have heard of Tuscany and Umbria. But it seems that very few have heard of Basilicata, the dry, mountainous region in the instep of the Italian boot that is bordered by Campania and Calabria on one side, Puglia on the other, and whose southern coastline is on the Ionian sea.

This also means that most people have not heard about one of the most spectacular places I have ever visited, the city of Matera.

The sassi in Matera, waiting for the rain

Matera is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, it's history dating back to paleolithic time, roughly 10, 000 years ago. 

Matera is famous for it's ancient cave dwellings which are in the section of the ancient town known as the Sassi. A gorge splits the land wide open and is filled with more than 1500 caves that have been homes since the paleolithic age. In the middle ages many of the larger caves were built out with more traditional house fronts added, during a time when the city thrived.

the gorge rolls down to a flowing river, crossab;e by a rope ans wood bridge.

Matera caves

The more wealthy you were, the higher up the hill your house was, allowing more light to flow in. The poorer you were the lower down the gorge you lived, with the least available light. The lower down the hill the less building there was, until all there were were caves.

looking across the sassi to Santa Maria de Idris church

Consequently most of the exterior building happened higher up the hill.

Matera wasn't built from the ground up, it was quite ingeniously built from the ground down. They literally dug down even sized blocks of stone to create new houses or rooms.

Rupestrian church Santa Maria de Idris

Some of the caves were built into beautiful rupestrian churches, adorned with their byzantine styled frescoes.

Rupestri church, image via Unesco.org

iinside Santa Maria de Idris
image via pangea project

image via sassipoint.it

Photography inside the Rupestrian churches is forbidden, so the fresco images used here are from the web.

Santa Lucia alle Malve

The frescoes in the churches are painted in archaic Byzantine styles that are 200 years behind the style of their contemporaries being painted throughout Italy at the same time ( the1300's), which is a good indication as to how remote and isolated Matera was. But still they are breathtaking. 

the rabbit warren that is the sassi in Matera

The prosperity that Matera knew until the 19th century waned until it eventually became poverty stricken.
In 1935 Mussolini exiled writer and painter Carlo Levi to the Basilicata.  He was tormented by what he saw in Matera, cave homes with 20 plus people and their animals all living in one room, children looking like famine victims with grossly bloated stomachs and skeletal limbs, too disheartened to wipe flies from their eyes. No running water or sewerage, rampant malaria, devastating poverty. 

He wrote the book "Christ Stopped At Eboli" (published in 1945) about what he saw in Matera, a place so cut off from the rest of the country that almost no one in Italy had even heard of it in the 1940's. For most Italians this was the first they heard about Matera and the dreadful conditions the people were living in. The book struck the very soul of Italy, and for decades was part of the school curriculum.

Christ Stopped at Eboli: The Story of a Year (FSG Classics) 

By the 1950's Matera had become the shame of Italy. The government built new housing in the upper part of the city, outside of the old town, and started moving families out of the caves and into apartments. The government took over ownership of the sassi, and from the 1960's until the beginning of 1990 the sassi essentially was abandoned, apart from squatters here and there. 

in the rabbit warren of the sassi every walkway is someone else's roof

By the early 1990's people started moving back. The government created a program whereby if you committed to rebuilding and renovating the cave homes you could have them rent free for 30 years, followed by a 99 year lease. This has helped Matera turn into a vibrant, arty, fabulous city that has been named European City Of Culture for 2019.

Walking up to Santa Maria de Idris in Matera during the September 2016 Glam Italia Tour

The sassi became re-gentrified, homes and luxurious hotels were built inside the caves, followed by restaurants, bars and shops. A huge portion of the sassi has been kept intact and unchanged for posterity, and is used in movies that need an ancient feel, such as The Passion Of The Christ. 

Matera of the movies - this section of the sassi remains untouched

The rest has become one of the most chic, unique and fabulous places you will ever visit.

The Glam Italia Tour stayed here at Le Dodice Lune hotel deep in the sassi. See the hotel link below.

Matera is a city that will take your breath away. The combination of the rich history, the brilliance of the architecture and the design of the sassi, the abject poverty turned into successful rehabilitation, and the absolutely exquisite beauty of this place works its way into your heart and leaves you aching to go back.

Where to stay in Matera