Il Dolce Viaggio: Small town Tuscany

Community Highlights Road Trips Il Dolce Viaggio: Small town Tuscany

We had caught tantalizing glimpses of the polygonal walls of Monteriggioni from the autostradale on the way into Siena but it was far too late to consider stopping. Now that we had exhausted the major sights of the larger city we had the perfect opportunity to remedy this omission and made the half hour drive northwest. It was easy to find spaces in the paid lot just below the walls and then take a short walk uphill through the Porta Franca into the center of the medieval town.

We had already seen a few small villages in Tuscany but Monteriggioni was the tiniest yet. The hilltop town was established by the Sienese in the thirteenth century as a defensive outpost along the Via Francigena to provide an early warning of any encroachment by the Florentines. The roughly octagonal walls enclose a space with just a two hundred meter diameter, as shown in this Google Earth screenshot. The buildings aren't packed together densely and much of the space within the walls was given over to olive groves of which some remnants still persist.

The Piazza Roma just inside the Porta Franca is quite expansive and contains a well that provided a secure water supply for the town in case of a siege. Most of the buildings around the piazza have been restored and turned into restaurants and hotels. The structure of most interest is the simple but appealing thirteenth century church of Santa Maria Assunta. The builders of the church used the classic Tuscan golden-brown limestone but sprinkled in a few blocks of black granite in regular patterns to give the structure a charming individual character. The belltower looks much older but was actually constructed four centuries after the nave.

Aside from dawdling over a coffee or a meal there isn't much to do in Monteriggioni after strolling the two short streets that run between the medieval gates. For us the most worthwhile activity involved paying the small fee to ascend to the walkways that have been built just inside the town walls for their elevated views of the surrounding countryside. Monteriggioni is surrounded by a region of low hills known as the Montagnola Senese which create a multicolored, undulating landscape that can be viewed from anywhere along the perimeter.

The walkways also provided an interesting and pleasant new perspective on the interior of the hilltop city. From here the tourists and modern trappings were less visible and it was easier to imagine how the medieval inhabitants of the town may have seen it. Unlike other towns which were densely packed with tall buildings and narrow streets, Monteriggioni appeared to have been comfortable providing for only a few dozen inhabitants. There was plenty of room to stroll around and no shortage of agricultural space surrounding the dwellings.

We had visited Monteriggioini one week too late to experience the annual medieval festival but my research indicated we might be able to find a harvest festival in the even tinier town of Murlo, half an hour south of Siena. When we arrived the small parking lot was practically empty and there was no sign of a festival taking place. The kids had fallen asleep and Mei Ling was rather groggy itself so I walked on my own to the entrance of the town to see if perhaps I could gather more information. At the top of the hill were more of those classic Tuscany views including one prodigious line of cypress trees that may have been delineating the boundary between the properties of two local landowners.

The medieval town was completely quiet and deserted. There wasn't even an elderly pensioner cracking open a shutter to see who was disturbing the mid-afternoon tranquility. There certainly wasn't a festival taking place nor was there any sign that there would be one in the near future. I spotted a restaurant, Il Libridinoso, which I had marked as a possible dinner destination in my itinerary but it was closed for the gap between meal hours. There didn't appear to be any other commercial establishments in the town at all. The only sign of life was a cat sprawled dead asleep in the center of a small piazza, supremely confident that no human traffic would arrive to disturb its slumber.

At this point I had to consult my itinerary to figure out where we should go next. We had finished with Siena much earlier than I had expected and our first two stops hadn't taken up very much time at all. I settled on Buonconvento and San Quirico d'Orcia, even though the last of these would bring us close to the next day's resting point of Montepulciano. The interesting towns in the region are so close together that it would take less than an hour to return to Siena. The autostradale ran right through the middle of Buonconvento where a much larger modern town had developed outside of the medieval city. I had become accustomed to arriving naturally at a parking lot just outside the old walls and I was scratching my head trying to understand why Buonconvento was considered to be worth a stop. Eventually I pulled over and figured out where I needed to go with the assistance of Google Maps, a tiny area in the northwest corner of the town. The Centro Storico consisted of just one major street, Via Soccini, which gave rise to a few narrow alleys and small piazzas.

There were a few interesting boutiques along Via Soccini and the usual collection of churches and small museums, but no particular sights to justify making a special trip to the town. The style of the buildings was generally red brick instead of the quarried stone that I preferred. We spent about an hour there and I concluded that the visit was rather superfluous with respect to the other fascinating cities we had stopped at. Nevertheless it was interesting to see yet another variation on the theme of these ancient Tuscan cities.

Before San Quirico d'Orcia we stopped at a small hilltop agriturismo that was recommended on Maps as a viewpoint, marked as Podere Belvedere. To get there we had to drive a few hundred meters down a poorly-maintained dirt road filled with potholes. Eventually we came to the farmhouse which had all the stereotypical Tuscan touches - the uphill driveway lined with cypresses, a patio with wooden furniture, rusty farm equipment. The only item out of place was a lawn sprinkler that showered us at intervals if we forgot to step out of the way. The views over the rolling hills were certainly pleasant but nothing that I felt was out of the ordinary.

San Quirico d'Orcia's long name identifies its location within the Val d'Orcia, thereby distinguishing it from the tiny hamlet San Quirico in Collina outside of Florence. The town in which we now stood had some historical significance due to its location on the Via Francigena and was an occasional player in the machinations of the Holy Roman Empire.

The center of San Quirico was quite a bit more active than the other towns we had visited that afternoon. I don't know if it was more popular or just because dinner time was approaching. In Piazza della Libertà a lavender replica of Michelangelo's David stood inscrutably in front of the Chiesa di San Francesco. Clusters of visitors chatted over apertifs in the outdoor cafes in the square.

I had been considering returning to Murlo to have dinner at Il Libridinoso and to confirm once and for all that there was no harvest festival there. I couldn't motivate myself to call the restaurant to assure a table and I concluded the better part of valor would be to secure a meal in our current location. A quick review of the restaurants that were open on Sunday evenings indicated that the Michelin-listed Trattoria Toscana Al Vecchio Forno was the most promising, with an added bonus of opening a half hour earlier than the others. With no reservation and the town appearing more crowded with every passing minute we headed towards the entrance ten minutes in advance of the opening time. The closed door set into a stone wall seemed quite appealing and there was already one small group waiting on the bench outside. Now that I had selected the restaurant, it seemed quite important that we garner a table there and I eyed each new arrival nervously wondering if they already had a reservation or if they might try to push in ahead of us. When the door ultimately opened and a host emerged I gestured to those already waiting that they should have the first crack at a table. They were ushered inside and no one else attempted to jump in front as the host's attention turned to us. Our lack of reservation proved not to be an issue and we were shown to a table all the way in the rear of the outdoor section of the restaurant. The kids were very pleased with the meal as they each got their favorite dishes - spaghetti al tartufo for Cleo, ribollita for Ian, and pici all’aglione for Spenser. We adults weren't exactly disappointed but neither were we awed. Our impression by this point was that there seemed to be a ceiling for Tuscan restaurants. The best we could hope for was competent renditions of the typical dishes, but it didn't seem likely we would ever find anything surprising or inventive. Fortunately we very rarely encountered a meal that hadn't been executed competently.

By the time we arrived back at Siena it was well after dark. I figured we would have to park in the Il Campo garage again but to my surprise there were two open spaces on the street just outside the Porta Tufi. They would be paid parking spots after nine AM but free overnight, and just three minutes further away than the garage from the Airbnb. I hate paying for parking garages so this interesting discovery put me in an ever better mood, as if a day driving through beautiful Tuscan scenery wasn't enough. We had the same view of the Siena skyline from Via di Fontanella as the previous night, but this time we could enjoy its gentle illumination in the night time.

This featured blog entry was written by zzlangerhans from the blog Fledgling Explorers.
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