San Gimignano attractions

San Gimignano's sights fit inside 13.88 hectares — the area UNESCO inscribed in 1990 — and you can walk between all of them in fifteen minutes.

The towers are the reason to come: fourteen of the original seventy-two tower-houses still stand. Only one is climbable, the Torre Grossa, entered through the Palazzo Comunale, which also holds the town's Pinacoteca.

The Collegiata carries fresco cycles of the 14th and 15th centuries and the Chapel of Santa Fina painted by Ghirlandaio. The Complesso di Santa Chiara and the Chiesa di San Lorenzo in Ponte complete the museum circuit, and a single €10 civic museums ticket covers the Palazzo Comunale, Santa Chiara and San Lorenzo in Ponte together, with the Collegiata ticketed separately at €7.

The two squares are sights in themselves. Piazza della Cisterna — triangular, sloping, named for a cistern of 1287 and holding a well of 1346, with paving partly from the 13th century — opens into Piazza del Duomo.

And the view from outside, which no ticket covers: walk out of a gate, turn round, and the skyline that made this town famous is in front of you with vineyards underneath it.