Siena, San Gimignano, Medici Villas: Get out of Florence to truly understand it

One of my favourite elements of Renaissance art is the backgrounds.  Look over the shoulder of every madonna and there's an exquisite, hilly landscape, dotted with olive groves, striped with rows of poplars, crowned with walled cities.  Sacred space bears a startling resemblance to the Tuscan countryside.

Florentines were urban captains of industry, but they loved the land outside their walls.   It graced their art, they wrote and read poetry about it, they built villas within it.  They also spent a lot of the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries fighting with neighbours like Siena and Lucca, trying to take over more of it.  Thus any introduction to Florence really needs to include some forays out of town, if you're really going to understand the big picture.

We started with one of the oldest and most significant of the Medici villas ringing town:  Poggio a Caiano.  It's hard to overstate the architectural significance of this place.  Lorenzo de' Medici (the great) asked Giuliano da Sangallo to do something revolutionary in the late 15th century.  Instead of the usual defensive, enclosed castle, he wanted a gracious building looking back to ancient Rome, set in gardens, with no military potential.  It inspired villas throughout Tuscany, which inspired Palladio in the Veneto in the 16th century, who set the model for most of the grand country houses of England in the 17th and 18th, which then set the model for the idea of noble living around the rest of the world.  Including the White House in Washington D.C.

When I visited about a decade ago there wasn't a lot to see once I admired the world-shaping exterior.  The main hall, filled with grand frescos glorifying the Medicis, commissioned by Medici Pope Leo X, and a 19th century theatre and billiard room added for Italian King Vittoro Emanuele, was about it.  The government's clearly been beavering away, as the aforementioned rooms are now in great shape, and have been joined by almost all of the other rooms on the piano nobile (the main entertaining floor). These aren't Renaissance, but 19th century.  Some are a suite of rooms done up for Napoleon's sister Elisa, who he made Grand Duchess of Tuscany and who took her responsibilities there seriously.  This was a favourite retreat and the rooms are lovely examples of the light, delicate neoclassicism of the Napoleonic era.  The other rooms are more of the renovations made for the King during the brief years when Florence served as capital of the newly-united Italy.  They are heavier-handed, but still a pleasure to explore.  Though the villa had been emptied, the curators have found representative furniture to stage the rooms.

Amazingly, Poggio a Caiano is free.  As are all of the Medici villas.  A bit of pay-back, I thought, for the steep service charges at the Uffizi.  These villas are also little visited.  As opposed to the crowds in every corner of Florence, we spent an hour here on a Sunday afternoon wandering by ourselves.  In fact, it looked so empty we drove right by the first time, thinking it was closed.

While Lorenzo and his successors were chilling out at these villas, writing poetry and commissioning art, they were also plotting to take over traditional enemies like Siena.  If you're going to see just one other town in Tuscany, this is my pick.  I think its cathedral is the most beautiful in central Italy, and its down square the most distinctive.  It's also filled with lovely shops, many of them specialising in local delicacies like cured meats and truffles.  It's all spread across several hills, adding to the picturesque appeal of the place.

The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta stands atop one of those, a shocking confection of striped black and white marble rising out of the mellow tones of walls and tile roofs that gave the Crayola box the name Burnt Siena.  It's a sizeable place, but to one side you see half finished walls that show the original ambition; the Sienese at their peak were challenging Rome, but they ran out of money so had to scale back ambition. Inside, those bold stripes continue, leading your eye relentlessly to a monumental altar.  They're so compelling you might not notice anything else.  But you need to, because this place is a treasure trove.  There's the line of lifelike papal busts that stretches along the tops of the arches in the nave.  The magnificent pulpit by Nicola Pisano, sitting on columns that balance on the backs of prowling lionesses, some with their prey in their mouths.  Most famous are the unique inlaid floors, depicting ornate scenes created with different types of marbles.

Through a door on the right you'll find what I think is one of the most beautiful rooms in the world, the Piccolomini library.  Added by a local boy who became pope, it houses an impressive collection of illuminated manuscripts.  You'll hardly notice them, though, because the walls are covered with a pastel riot of frescoes of religious and historical scenes.  If that weren't bright enough, there's an ornately painted ceiling, a highly patterned floor and a Roman sculpture of the three graces in the middle of it all.  It is not a room for fans of simplicity.

Sloping towards the top of another hill nearby is the Piazza del Campo.  This is regularly rated one of the grandest squares (albeit it's actually scallop shaped) in Europe, and is where the horses run the famous Palio.  Like many an Italian piazza it's dominated by a towered town hall.  The elements that make this one so stunning, however, are its unique shape, accentuated by the ribs of lighter marble laid into the pavement, the way it slopes up the hill, and the assortment of pleasing, architecturally matched buildings that edge it.  On finer days, I've sat at one of the restaurants at the top of the slope and watched the world go by.  But it was too cold for that.

Instead, we went into the Palazzo Publico.  I wanted to show Piers the famous frescoes of the Allegory of Good and Bad Government.  Though badly damaged, it's still great fun to see this early bit of spin doctoring, with a happy, prosperous Siena under a democratic government on one wall, and a crumbling Siena with people getting murdered in the streets under the tyrant displayed on the other.  (One assumes the Medici, once in complete control, weren't too concerned about preserving the warning against the tyrant.)  The palace has a whole series of rooms with other interesting frescoes, most from the late Middle Ages but one room glorifying Garibaldi, Vittorio Emanuele and Italian unification.

Our meandering drive to Siena via Greve in Chianti went through some of the most beautiful landscapes in the region.  It is a pleasure simply to drive here, pulling over occasionally to take in the view or have a picnic lunch.

The road to San Gimignano is a bit less picturesque given the industrial sprawl of Poggibonsi you have to navigate to get there.  But the destination is worth it.  Much smaller than Siena, the town would be a forgotten backwater today if it weren't for the oddity that it retains so many of the towers that were once a feature of Medieval homes.  As civic governments got stronger, they brought warring families (think Montagues and Capulets) under control and demanded they de-fortify their townhouses.  But, for whatever reason, many of the towers in San Gimignano didn't come down.  So you end up with an intact, walled city looking pretty much as it would have circa 1300.

Beyond the architecture itself, there's little serious sightseeing besides the church, which houses my pick of the most horrifically graphic vision of hell in Medieval art.  (Yes, that devil is indeed impaling that screaming blonde woman there.) The clever folks of San Gim work to keep all those tourists who come to look at the towers, however, by turning the main streets into some of the best tourist shopping in Tuscany.  Here you'll find leather workshops, home stores with exquisite linens and kitchen items made of olive wood, gourmet food shops, ceramic workshops and art galleries. The prices are slightly lower than in Florence and the atmosphere somewhat more refined.  At least in the off season, San Gimignano does seem to calm down!


There are a wealth of other possibilities outside of Florence.  Some people love Lucca.  Others swear by Pisa.  I wanted to get us to Volterra, but ran out of time.  Tuscany's a big place.  If you want just a few highlights beyond Florence, I recommend these.