Wednesday 14 May 2025 – The very basic nature of our hostel accommodation was heavily borne in on us as we went down to breakfast. The tables had been set out with places allocated by name – and those before us had clearly completely ignored all this and there were basically no untouched places left for us to sit at; also, all the bread had been taken and not replaced, the kettle was nearly empty and the kitchen was locked. This was a very poor show, we thought. We’d arranged an 8am start between us and the many people who had exited earlier had swept through the buffet like a plague of locusts. It would have been a good idea to have someone on duty in the kitchen to help with replacement fodder. We organised tea and I had some cereal, but there was little there for Caroline or Jane to eat.
It’s an attractive enough setting
round the back of a 12th-Century church just outside Gambassi Terme,
but one feels it could be better run.
Off we went, then, at about 0830, into a morning in which the fog was just clearing. The Via Francigena signs pointed us towards Gambassie Terme, but the S-cape app’s red line bypassed the place. We followed the line, and so I’m afraid I can’t tell you what the town was like. “Terme”, by the way, means it was a spa town.
The profile for the day (let me remined you here)
showed us going down from Gambassi Terme, then up about 300m overall (ugh!) before descending once more before a gentle rise up to San Gimignano. We started on tarmac before heading off on a dirt road
which led past an intriguing sign.
The scenery was, as before, lovely.
and I was particularly taken with the “stripy corduroy” effect achieved in some patches of vines.
The Chianti sign enigma was explained a little further on, as we passed an attractive winery.
It offered stamps for our “credenziali” (passports for the route) and the sign outside said it was open. But I think it was kind of Spanish open, i.e. closed. So we moved on, but in researching the name later, I learned a little to supplement my non-existent understanding of Italian wine. The Chianti region is in central Tuscany, with Chianti Classico being the area between Florence and Siena. This winery might produce Classico, or possibly Chianti Colli Senesi, which is regional to San Gimignano. Classico must be at least 80% Sangiovese grape variety, other variants of Chianti must be at least 70%.
We were on the down stretch of the walk, but soon reached the bottom, by another fine-looking establishment
which turned out to be a newly-opened agriturismo outfit called La Torre. At this point, the uphill work starts.
It was a long uphill pull, at times quite steep – but at least a lot of it was in the shade, which made it a lot less unpleasant than yesterday’s toil.
We passed a horse-riding centre (calling itself “Via Francigena”, so presumably offering people the chance to ride part of the route)
one of whose dogs accompanied us quite a way carrying a ball
but it didn’t want to part with it, so clearly wasn’t a retriever.
The steep uphill work continued for a while
but at least offered us great views of where we had earlier been descending.
We passed some handsome buildings
many of which seemed to be some kind of agriturismo setup, but none of which could actually be arsed to set up a coffee stop for thirsty passing pilgrims (of which it had to be said, there was a steady trickle).
We passed through a village, Pancole, which also had no coffee stops, but it did have a sanctuary.
We couldn’t, sadly, explore it because it was in use; a mass was about to start for a congregation seemingly made up of the local elderly and infirm – lots of ambulances and taxis outside – they didn’t invite us in, though.
We followed the road a little further until we could see San Gimignano in the distance; it didn’t seem to be much higher than we were, so I thought that perhaps the worst of the climb was over.
Wrongly, as it turned out. The Via signposts took us on to a track which carried on steeply uphill. In the spirit of proper completion, we grimly ploughed on and up, past more handsome buildings (but no coffee stops)
until we (a) got a good glimpse of our destination, San Gimignano
and (b) reached the highest point of the walk, marked by the Monasterio de Cellole.
In the inevitable way of these things, our route then led us down to a very poorly-designed road which led further down before going up into San Gimignano. One would have hoped the designers would have worked out some way of keeping it level for us poor pilgrims, but no. However, there was a consolation and a distraction because the views were, as before, stupendous. It was occasionally possible to catch a nice vignette of the countryside
but by and large it’s too big to fit into a single photo.
Eventually, we toiled up into San Gimignano, which is, you guessed it, very steep in places, mainly up
as we had to get to our hotel, Hotel La Cisterna, which is in the town’s main square, i.e. the highest point. Before you boys at the back start any schoolboy giggles, the name is nothing lavatorial. “Cisterna” in Italian means “Well”, which is more than one can say for the current US President, and you can see the well right in front of our hotel.
Our run of luck, of hotels being ready for us, continued, and our baggage had arrived, so, it being only about 1pm by this stage, we could swiftly get hosed down and changed and head out for a decent lunch, which we took just round the corner at a bar/cafe called Torre Guelfa.
After lunch, we were all feeling a siesta coming on, so had a quick look at the Duomo
and found out its opening hours for a later expedition for some sightseeing and gelato. We were intrigued by one gelato shop
which had the most extraordinary queue. It’s not as if it was the only one in town, so we decided it would clearly bear research later, when the crowds had dissipated. We also decided to visit one very interesting museum that Jane had found, to make sure we got to it before it closed.
It’s a beautiful recreation of how San Gimignano – “The City of Towers” – would have looked in medieval times. At one stage there were over a hundred towers in the town, mainly built by people to show off. 14 remain, and you can see some of them in the photos on this page.
Siesta over, we ventured out once more with our main objective being ice-cream a visit to the cathedral. It is a well-recommended activity, and costs only €5 to get in. I wasn’t sure what to expect from such a highly-touted place, but there was a tiny clue as we headed for the entrance.
What you see, on walking in, is remarkably impactful. The interior of the church is liberally covered with frescoes and it made a huge impression on me.
It’s not an intimate space for communing with God, but it has a certain majesty about it.
Here’s a gallery of some of the photos I took to try to convey what the interior looks like.
After that, ice-cream seemed to be a good thing, so we went back to that popular shop
where the queue had died down a bit, and we could see the staggering variety of ice-cream they offered.
We consumed ours whilst sitting on the Duomo steps, and after that a drink seemed a necessity. We were heading for the Terraza outside our hotel when Jane suggested we walk down a side alley to a punto panoramico that (as it happens) our hotel bedroom looks out on. This was a good move.
There is a little enoteca in the Cisterna square called Divinorum, and it has a back door that offers a fantastic view in the afternoon sunshine.
A drink there in the last of the sunshine set us up nicely for a reasonably early night in preparation for the morrow.
Tomorrow’s walk is about the same length as today’s was, but should be a little less arduous. We have to get to Colle Val d’Elsa and the S-cape app describes the walk as “one of the most beautiful routes on the Via Francigena”. So we can look forward to something much nicer than the humdrum views we’ve been subjected to so far, eh?
