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Italy Visitors Bureau
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| Romantic Towns to see |
We’ve all heard of Venice, Florence, Siena, Pisa,
Verona but these places, beautiful as they may be are only the tip of a very big iceberg. There are literally hundreds of
beautiful towns to discover, some of which are even hardly know outside their respective region. Even the smallest village
seems to have a work of art of history attached to it.
San Gimignano delle belle Torri
"San Gimignano delle belle Torri" is situated in Tuscany, 56 km south of Florence. It served as an important relay point
for pilgrims on the Via Francigena to and from Rome. The patrician families, who controlled the city, built some 72 tower-houses
(up to 50m high) as symbols of their wealth and power. Only 14 have survived but San Gimignano has retained its feudal atmosphere
and appearance. The city also contains masterpieces of 14th and 15th-century Italian art.
Pienza
It
was in this Tuscan town that Renaissance town-planning concepts were first put into practice after Pope Pius II decided, in
1459, to transform the look of his birthplace. He chose the architect Bernardo Rossellino, who applied the principles of his
mentor, Leon Battista Alberti. This new vision of urban space was realized in the superb square known as Piazza Pio II and
the buildings around it: the Piccolomini Palace, the Borgia Palace and the cathedral with its pure Renaissance exterior and
an interior in the late Gothic style of south German churches.
Verona
The historic
city of Verona was founded in the 1st century BC. It flourished particularly under the rule of the Scaliger family in the
13th and 14th centuries and as part of the Republic of Venice from the 15th to 18th centuries. Verona, a city of culture and
art, has preserved a remarkable amount of monuments from antiquity and the medieval and Renaissance periods, and represents
an outstanding example of a military stronghold.
Ferrara
Ferrara, which grew
up around a ford over the River Po, became an intellectual and artistic centre that attracted the greatest minds of the Italian
Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries. Here, Piero della Francesca, Jacopo Bellini and Andrea Mantegna decorated the
palaces of the House of Este. The humanist concept of the 'ideal city' came to life here in the neighbourhoods built from
1492 onwards by Biagio Rossetti according to the new principles of perspective. The completion of this project marked the
birth of modern town planning and influenced its subsequent development.
Modena
The
magnificent 12th-century Cathedral at Modena is a supreme example of Romanesque art, the work of two great artists (Lanfranco
and Wiligelmo). With its associated piazza and the soaring tower, it testifies to the strength of the faith of its builders
and to the power of the Canossa dynasty who commissioned it.
Siena
Siena is
the embodiment of a medieval city. The whole town, built around the Piazza del Campo, was devised as a work of art that blends
into the surrounding landscape. Over the centuries, it has preserved Gothic appearance, acquired between the 12th and 15th
centuries. During this period the work of Duccio, the Lorenzetti brothers and Simone Martini was to influence the course of
Italian and, more broadly, European art
Florence
Built on the site of an Etruscan
settlement, Florence, the symbol of the Renaissance, rose to economic and cultural pre-eminence under the Medici in the 15th
and 16th centuries. Its 600 years of extraordinary artistic activity can be seen above all in the 13th-century cathedral (Santa
Maria del Fiore), the Church of Santa Croce, the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace, the work of great masters such as Giotto, Brunelleschi,
Botticelli and Michelangelo.
Venice
Everybody knows about it but we just couldn’t
leave it out. The whole city is an extraordinary architectural masterpiece in which even the smallest building contains works
by some of the world's greatest artists such as Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and others.
Crespi
d’Adda
Crespi d'Adda in Capriate San Gervasio in Lombardy is an outstanding example of the 19th-
and early 20th-century 'company towns' built in Europe and North America by enlightened industrialists to meet the workers'
needs. The site is still remarkably intact and is partly used for industrial purposes, although changing economic and social
conditions now threaten its survival.
Lucca
We will let Henry James do the
describing of this gem of a place “Lucca...a compact and admirable little city, the very model of a small pays de Cocagne,
overflowing with everything that makes for ease for plenty, for beauty, for interest and good example." All that can be added
is that Luca is a jewel of a town, less well known than Florence and Pisa perhaps, but just as beautiful. The cathedrals of
San Michele and San Martino make two of the finest Gothic and Romanesque on offer in northern Italy.
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