Discovering Tuscany

Monteriggioni is situated on a hill, surrounded high city walls. Unlike any other site you have seen, the town is truly unique.
Monteriggioni, thanks to its beauty and countryside, has become synonymous with Tuscany, making it the natural backdrop for films and commercials. It is very popular with tourists, reaching up to 70,000 tourists every year. Inside the city walls and its towers is a small village. It is set inside two medieval doorways.
Today you can only see 11 of the 15 original towers because 4 are now level with the walls.
The hill where the castle was erected is natural: the almost perfect circular layout of the walls was made simply by following the design of the curvatures at ground level.
At one time the towers were far taller than they are now. They were such an amazing sight that Dante in the Divine Comedy (Hell, Canto XXXI) used them to make an analogy to define the appearance of Nembrotto, Fialte and Anteogiants which were great fissures in the chasm of Malebolge.

From a geographical point of view, the borders of Chianti are fairly indistinct and disputed, and include the entire hill areas between Florence, Siena and Arezzo.
From a historical point of view, Chianti is the territory which includes Gaiole, Radda and Castellina, or the old League of Chianti which was later changed to the province of Chianti, now in the province of Siena. When the wine area of Chianti was established in 1932 (which included the Classico subzone,Chianti proper and other areas that are now in the province of Florence), the geographical area was extended following the boundaries of the wine sub-zones.

In perfect harmony with the countryside surrounding them, the Tuscan art cities offer an exceptional heritage of history and art. All the artistic beauty of Tuscany is a reminder not only of the glorious past of our region but also the stories and events that made Tuscany the cradle of Italian civilization and culture. Florence, universally renowned as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, enchants its visitors with its wonderful Renaissance architecture; Siena, the city of the Palio, whose historic centre is a UNESCO world heritage site, has wonderful examples of medieval architecture.
And then Pisa with its Leaning Tower, Lucca with his sixteen-century walls, Arezzo and its goldsmith tradition. In the hills nearby you can find medieval villages, ancient fortified towns and little pearls of history which are still here thanks to care and passion with which they have been maintained over time. We are talking about the towers in San Gimignano, the tufa soil of Volterra and its alabaster quarries, just to name a few. Certaldo, the city of Boccaccio, Massa Marittima, and San Galgano and the sword in the stone.