Days 11–13, Part 2: Into Tuscany

37 Days Across Europe · Days 11–13 of 37 · Siena · San Gimignano · Pisa

A day out of Florence. Siena's medieval gravity, San Gimignano's towers, a wine lunch somewhere in between — and the obligatory lean.

SIENNA

Piazza del Campo, Siena. The Torre del Mangia at 87 metres against a moving Tuscan sky. Two figures cross the brickwork far below — everything in the right proportion.

There is a version of the Tuscany day trip that a lot of travellers do from Florence. They book a coach, see Siena at speed, cross San Gimignano off the list, and are back in Florence by dinner. I understand this. Thought I would never do that but what the hell, was too lazy to drive.

Siena was inconvenient and without "Get Your Guide" it would have been a nightmare to navigate myself. It turned out to be one of the better decisions of the Italian leg. Tuscany is one of those landscapes that rewards the ability to stop, if only if I could pull over on a hillside road or take the long way through a village that wasn't part of the tour. Alas I could only do this from a coach window.

Nevertheless we left Florence early. By the time we reached Siena, the morning mist was still sitting in the valleys and the city was quiet.

The City That Florence Could Have Been

Florence and Siena are separated by roughly 70 kilometres and somewhere between five hundred years of rivalry and a completely different idea of what a city should be. Florence won, historically speaking — it absorbed Siena in 1555 — but Siena responded to this by essentially stopping, by preserving its medieval self with an almost defiant completeness. The result is a city that feels less like a living place and more like the most extraordinary stage set ever constructed. Which sounds like a criticism and isn't.

The Campo from floor level — low angle, dramatic sky, the scale of the tower restored.

The Piazza del Campo is the thing everyone comes for, and it earns every superlative. The shell-shaped concave brick floor, the Palazzo Pubblico with its tower, the way the surrounding buildings curve around the space in a half-ring, it is the greatest medieval piazza in Italy, possibly in Europe, and the only appropriate response on first sight is to stand still and let it register. Which is what I did, at some length, despite the overcast sky and the delivery van parked at the far edge that nobody seemed bothered by.

The Palazzo Pubblico seen through a market archway on the Campo's edge — souvenir flags as foreground, six centuries of civic architecture as background.

A woman in a red hat at the Fonte Gaia, the marble fountain at the Campo's upper edge. She stood there for some time, looking at her phone. The fountain didn't seem to mind.

What the photographs don't show, what they can't, is the quality of Siena's silence. Florence is noisy even when it's quiet. Siena, even at midday with tourists in the piazza, has a stillness to it that comes from the stone itself, from streets so narrow that sound doesn't travel far, from a city that has been sealed inside its medieval walls for five centuries and hasn't particularly wanted to modernise beyond them.

A Baroque church off the Campo, late morning sun coming through at an angle that produces the kind of lens flare you'd spend an afternoon trying to manufacture and here arrived completely uninvited. The man standing before the door — alone, looking up — was there when I arrived. I waited. He didn't move. Some people understand instinctively how to stand inside a photograph.

The Duomo Interior: A Room You Are Unprepared For

I will say something about the Siena Duomo that I was not expecting to say, having arrived already saturated with Italian cathedral interiors from Florence. It is unlike anything else.

The striped black and white marble, every column, every wall surface, rising from floor to dome, creates an effect that feels less like a church and more like a fever dream of geometry. The floor alone contains 56 marble inlaid panels, each one a different scene, each one covered for most of the year to protect it. The altarpiece blazes gold against that monochrome striping. The round window sends a circle of light down the nave that moves with the hours like a clock.

Looking down the nave of the Siena Duomo toward the altarpiece. The black and white marble striping on every surface — floors, columns, walls — is one of the most visually extraordinary interiors in Italy. No photograph does it justice. Go.

A young man photographing upward at the Duomo's flank — the scale of this detail puts him in miniature.

Outside the Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank — founded in 1472, the world's oldest operating bank. A man on a phone call, oblivious to the Gothic archway behind him. Both of them, in their own way, completely unbothered by history.

"Siena makes no effort to seem relevant. It simply is what it was, sealed inside its walls, indifferent to the century outside them. And somehow this is the most contemporary thing about it."

The best of Siena is found once you leave the Campo and begin walking the smaller streets that radiate outward through the city's seventeen medieval districts. Every alley gives onto something, an arch, a church facade, a sudden view over the Tuscan hills visible at the end of a narrow gap between buildings.

A Sienese alley with a bridge arch connecting buildings above — two figures at the far end give the scale.

A long straight street tapering toward a gate, two figures in the distance, a pink jacket the only colour in a monochrome frame.

Four letterboxes on a peeling plaster wall, number 7 in terracotta above them. A young woman pointing at the one that says Posta. This is the kind of image Siena makes possible almost by accident — the city as a found-object composition.

Two versions of the same wall, before and after — and a Sienese alley that somehow manages to be both entirely ordinary and completely cinematic simultaneously.

San Gimignano: The Medieval Manhattan

An hour northwest of Siena, San Gimignano sits on its hilltop like a medieval city that forgot to grow up. Fourteen towers still stand — the remnants of a once-72-strong skyline built by competing noble families as expressions of wealth and power, each family trying to build higher than their neighbours. The result, from a distance, looks genuinely improbable. From inside the walls, it looks like a film set, which is either a problem or a feature depending on your relationship with photogenic places.

Via San Giovanni, San Gimignano's main street, quiet on a weekday morning. One man walking through. Medieval towers above the roofline, a restaurant awning on the right, a parking cone doing its best to look out of place. The city wears its age lightly.

A leather boot shop — handmade, Vera Concia Vegetale Toscana, 100% Made in Italy, the sign says. In San Gimignano, this is not marketing, it is a statement of identity

A woman photographing a lavender shop doorway framed in a medieval stone arch, purple baskets on either side. She is doing exactly what the shop is designed to make her do, and knowing this doesn't make it less charming.

back street off the main drag — a café terrace on the left, a wine bistro ahead, two women photographing the scene. A church façade visible at the far end. This is the version of San Gimignano that the coaches miss: narrow, slow, completely unhurried.

We stopped for lunch somewhere between San Gimignano and the road south, a winery of sorts, Chianti was the order of the day. It was kind of unfortunate that I did not finish the wines on offer but it was getting late and I was already "south of the border" hence we moved on.with the afternoon softened agreeably around the edges.

This is, I should note, the correct way to visit Tuscany if you have the time, hire a car and perhaps a designated driver. In my case a tour bus did help.

Pisa: Let's Be Honest About It

I want to be fair to Pisa, because the city itself is genuinely pleasant, a university town with a good river, decent food, and a character entirely separate from its most famous attraction. The problem is that almost nobody who visits Pisa sees any of this, because the Leaning Tower is so comprehensively the reason for coming that everything else becomes invisible by comparison, including the cheesy pictures.

The tower, unassisted by any holding-it-up gesture from this photographer. It leans. This is genuinely visible in person in a way that photographs don't quite convey — the lean has a wrongness to it, an architectural uncanniness, that produces an actual double-take on first sight.

The Baptistery at the Campo dei Miracoli — a woman sitting alone on the steps beneath the green bronze doors, reading. The correct use of Pisa.

The tower itself: yes. You should see it. It leans more than you expect and the effect in person produces a genuine moment of disorientation that no photograph captures, your eye expects vertical and the tower refuses it. This architectural wrongness, a structural failure that became the world's most famous building, is oddly moving when you stand in front of it. An engineering mistake that outlasted every intentional achievement of its era.

The Campo dei Miracoli — the cathedral, the baptistery, the tower, on their shared green lawn, is beautiful in a way that surprises. You arrive expecting a tourist trap and find instead something quietly magnificent, the white marble catching whatever light is available and doing something luminous with it, the proportions generous in a way that the photographs don't suggest.

Would I make a special journey to Pisa? No, not quite. Would I add it to a Tuscan day that's already taking in Siena and San Gimignano? Without hesitation. Three hours is enough. See the piazza, eat a sandwich, get back on the road. And resist the impulse to photograph yourself holding up the tower. You will thank yourself for this later.

Coming next — Part 3

The Last Day in Florence

A simple walkabout. No agenda. The accordion player, the accordion player's wall, the last espresso, a wine window or two. Then the train north, and France.