San Gimignano is a small walled medieval hill town in Tuscany, Italy, about a 35-minute drive northwest of Siena or southwest of Florence. It is mainly famous for its medieval architecture, especially its towers, which may be seen from several miles outside the town.

The town also is known for the white wine, Vernaccia di San Gimignano, grown in the area.

While in other cities, such as Bologna or Florence, most or all of their towers have been brought down due to wars, catastrophes, or urban renewal, San Gimignano has managed to conserve fourteen towers of varying height which have become its international symbol.

There are many churches in the town: the two main ones are the Collegiata, formerly a cathedral, and Sant'Agostino, housing a wide representation of artworks from some of the main Italian renaissance artists.

The Communal Palace, once seat of the podestà, is currently home of the Town Gallery, with works by Pinturicchio, Benozzo Gozzoli, Filippino Lippi, Domenico di Michelino, Pier Francesco Fiorentino, and others.

From Dante's Hall in the palace, access may be made to a Majesty fresco by Lippo Memmi, as well as the Torre del Podestà or Torre Grossa, 1311, which stands fifty-four meters high.

The heart of the town contains the four squares, Piazza della Cisterna, Piazza Duomo where the Collegiata is located, Piazza Pecori, and Piazza delle Erbe. The main streets are Via San Matteo and Via San Giovanni, which cross the city from north to south.

We suggest you to visit the Historical Torture Museum in San Gimignano:

The collection is owned by Italian independent scholars who have made these instruments available for traveling exhibits on the subject of TORTURE. This collection shown for the first time in the U.S., in the city of San Francisco co-sponsored by Fort Mason Foundation. Shown in many historical and prestigious venues all over Europe, in Tokyo, in Argentina and Mexico, the exhibit has always raised the interest of millions of visitors and the press, not only for its great visual impact, but also for its clear message against the violation of human rights. Such violations have given rise to a great amount of resistance throughout the centuries and in the most diverse cultural contexts, and unfortunately continue to be very topical today.

If you like good wine here you have the possibility of tasting the typical Vernaccia:

Vernaccia is the white wine grown and produced near the Italian hill town of San Gimignano in Tuscany made from the Vernaccia grape. Wine has been being produced in the area for hundreds of years, perhaps even as early as the Etruscans. Since the Renaissance it has been considered one of Italy's finest white wines. It was the first Italian white wine to be awarded DOC status in 1966; on 9 July 1993 this was upgraded to DOCG.

Vernaccia is mentioned by Dante Alighieri (Purgatorio XXIV) as leading to Pope Martin IV's gluttony. He ate Bolsena eels pickled in the wine.

San Gimignano is the birthplace of the poet Folgore da San Gimignano (1270-1332). A fictionalised version of San Gimignano is featured in E.M. Forster's 1905 novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread as Monteriano. It is thought that the towers are the inspiration for the design of the campus of the University of Essex and of the residential colleges of Ezra Stiles and Morse at Yale University. M. C. Escher's 1923 woodcut, San Gimignano, [1] depicts the celebrated towers. Tea with Mussolini, a 1999 drama about the plight of English and American expatriates in Italy during World War II, was filmed in part at San Gimignano. In the fictional novel The Broker by John Grisham, Joel Backman takes his second of three wives on vacation in Italy to keep her from divorcing him. They rent a fourteenth-century monastery near San Gimignano for a month.