PPAC: San Gimignano

After eight years in Tuscany maybe it’s time to visit San Gimignano, I said to myself, packed uncle and bestia on Thursday and off we went, after a lovely stroll by the Elsa river. As everything in Italy it was full of art and surprisingly full of people.

San Gimignano, two hours NW from me, is a kind of place where street art must be searched for with a magnifying glass. It is overshadowed by other kinds of art, all public and free even though you’d be willing to pay for it.

You can pay for all the rest though, I was thinking as the smell of new leather kept hitting my nostrils, and shops attacked me left and right, and so many people, oh, the people speaking many languages, with their children and their dogs, masked or not, with gelatos or cameras, and the doors, ohhh, the doors, I could click on every one of them, but I’m spoiled and I choose, and through it all you can tell that you’re in “the region’s glamour girl” as a website calls it, so all is just the surface, ready to appease the fleeting masses, but I’m too tired to protest, so I wait in line for a gelato where others do, I click on all the towers, I enter courtyards, I gaze, I ahhh and ohhh, and then I leave. My Maremma is empty and waiting to hide me away from the people once again.

Today I’m not in the mood to search for historic facts. It was Etruscan and then Roman like much of this territory. Chances are that you will visit it when you come to Tuscany anyway (or have already). Here is just a little preview.

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  First we parked for 15 minutes to get the first impression.

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  A cat! And is that a frog bottom right?

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  And the birds above.

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  This view makes it seem like an ark…

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  A memory to the fallen ones who resisted. Who exactly did they resist?

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  Lots of serene resting people.

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  When you tell uncle to go to Virgin Mary.

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  This guy was standing there, not passing. I got bored waiting for him to move.

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  Hidden away in a narrow alley. I’d need more time to explore.

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  A sort of… cockroach?

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  I liked this view a lot but there was an artist’s dog following us and bestia didn’t approve of him so I couldn’t concentrate.

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  On return we passed this passage. Uncle said he would wait for me. Big mistake.

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  The passage proved rather incredible.

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  Everywhere I looked something was going on.

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  I kept looking around if there was anybody collecting entrance fee.

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  I’d pay for that!

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  But there was nobody and I could admire it all as much as I wished.

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  Above….

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  … and below, a cultured bestia.

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  Look , there is a bird on someone’s head.

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  All together. Yes, passage, you are might pretty.

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  As we left the city walls, just what I was searching for. We were all thirsty. Press the button.

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  A close-up of this rather special fountain.

For Photographing Public Art Challenge (PPAC) hosted by Cee at Cee’s Photo Challenges

This day in my blogging history

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  2015: Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors. —Jonas Salk

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  2017: Twenty layers of October 2016