Church in Tuscany

We visited a few interesting historic towns while we were there. The famous one we didn’t make it to was Florence. We intended to go there but decided smaller places worked better for our group. Since we enjoyed Tuscany so much I’m hoping we’ll go back again and make to Florence the next time.

Siena

Siena was quite crowded and very impressive. It’s built on steep hills which made it even more more fun and interesting.

The Piazza del Campo was way bigger than any other Piazza I saw in Italy (except perhaps the Piazza Navona in Rome, very long and thin because it was based on the ground plan of a Roman stadium). The Square itself was on a slope which made me feel like I was in some weird perspective-distorting machine, even though I wasn’t.

We found a pizza place on the Piazza del Campo where all 25 of us could have lunch together – I was very pleased that worked out.

We tried to go up the tower in the Piazza del Campo but the line was too long and slow-moving for our group. We did get to go around the Cathedral, which was spectacular. I’ve never seen a stripy cathedral before and the library wall and ceiling paintings were awesome.

Poppi

We asked Simone, one of the caretakers of the Villa, where he suggested we visit. I’m so glad we did because otherwise I’m not sure any of us would have come up with Poppi. He said it has one of the best castles in Italy.Once we went round it, we agreed.

Poppi is a tiny town in the Casentino region, an area I’d love to return to and explore more. There was hardly anyone else in Poppi (which made it an easy place to visit). Evidently it’s not on the ‘must see’ list of most tourists.

The castle can be seen from many miles around, being at the top of a steep hill. From the outside it’s not the most interesting castle I’ve seen, but the inside was spectacular. It had crisscrossing staircases which looked like it was out of a Harry Potter movie and the walls were covered in decoration.

We went up the bell tower – it was quite a way to the top and had the views you’d expect from a tower you can see from so many surrounding places. We decided to wait for the bell to ring. I’m not sure whether that was a good decision or not – it was extremely loud when you were that close (of course)! And for some reason it rang 77 times. It was so loud that even the hum after it stopped was very loud and took a while to die away.

Most of us went home again after visiting the castle: after our Siena day we wanted to spend the afternoon back at the villa, instead of being out all day again.

Arezzo

Steve and I drove into Arezzo before dinner. We wanted to make sure we had at least a brief look around the closest largish town to where our villa was located. Arezzo is quite sprawling, but has a compact historic center (yes, up a steep hill – and we unfortunately parked at the bottom of it!)

I liked the Romanesque St. Maria della Pieve very much. I think it’s built over an even older church because it has a sort of ‘lower level’ small church under the main one. Many of the old churches in Tuscany are built over even older ones. (If we’d had more time I would have visited a church near Poppi where an Etruscan sacrificial altar from 2600 B.C. has also been found – showing that had been a religious site for millenia, which was appropriately ‘Christianized’ once that was the official religion, so they adore different religious items and sculptures as the Virgin Mary which is really popular in the catholic religion.

If you are looking for a good way to spruce up your home, you can always choose to have some Virgin Mary statues on display. You can make a statement by having these statues in your home. These statues can really make you feel like you are standing on holy ground. When you are looking for one of these statues, the first thing that you should do is to find out which one that you will need to make.

I’m not sure what the group of nuns were doing. It looked like they were on a guided tour – do nuns go on guided tours??

Cortona

We were interested in going to Cortona. The owners confirmed it was a ‘must-see’ town, so we went there Thursday. Cortona outdid the other towns for steepness of its hills. Some of the ‘streets’ were so steep that they had shallow steps or even were staircases outright. Cars and scooters race down the narrowest of streets in Italy, competing with people on foot, but this gradient turned at least some routes into pedestrian access only.

We found an outdoor place down a short alley where we could all have lunch together outside in the shade created by the typical tall buildings which lined the streets of all the old towns. The food was great, as it was everywhere we ate on this trip.

We (some of us) went to a couple of great museums. One was of significant baroque (?) religious artwork and incorporated a prettily painted old church downstairs. The other was of Roman and Etruscan ruins. Based on this it seems the Etruscans were relatively civilized. My understanding is that there was no-one civilized in England before the Romans showed up. I was interested to see this was not the case in Italy before the Romans took over. I like history (can you tell?) and would have liked to see the Etruscan tombs near Cortona but as always, time and the level of interest of others in seeing such things ruled that out. At least on this trip.

The center near the Etruscan/Roman museum was touristy and had lots of stores, but as soon as we started going up the steep hill further we got well away from the crowds. We (some of us) went up the hill but not quite as far as my brother, evidently, who found a spectacular church at the top. Oh well…next time we can see that one.

Anghiari

On our last full day Steve and I went to Anghiari in the morning while most other people went to a wine tasting – which they said was excellent. Anghiari includes a small walled town up a hill, going back to the 12th and 13th century, but the part outside the wall goes back even farther, to Roman times. You can see the main street outside the wall is on a very straight road going way off into the distance – clearly Roman.

There was hardly anyone there and most shops were closed for August (yes, this seems to happen a lot in Italy – people go on vacation for the month and literally close up shop). The castle no longer exists but the remaining town walls were very impressive.

We spent the afternoon back at the villa and then that was the end of our trip. We left at 5:30 on Saturday to drive back to Rome airport for our 11:30 flight home. Coming home went smoothly except only 3 of our 4 checked suitcases arrived with us. But we did get it two days later (late last night).