Monteriggioni

Monteriggioni has became famous for its fourteen towers' walls which are among the best preserved all over Italy, also mentioned by Dante in the Divine Comedy, in the italian language used once upon a time. If you came close to the walls by night, you will find the new nightlights which let it seems as if it was witches' castle dancing in the skies. Within the walls, just beneath them, there are the vegetable gardens of the villagers, which during the medieval times were used to survive. During the battles between Siena and Florence village people used to cultivate potatoes and onions; they had also chickens and rabbits to eat. After this ring of vegetable gardens there are the villagers' houses and on the middle of the village the church' square with its belfry used to call devotes early in the morning, at midday and at sunset. When there were sieges the belfry singed more often to advice of the coming attacks. They say that the smaller higher towers of the walls, called torrini, were destroyed by the villagers themselves to avoid their debris falling inside when the invaders shot them by cannon or catapult.
Afterward they have been rebuilt at the beginning of the twentieth century. But they have been rebuilt just on one side of the walls (that one visible by the roads outside) just for show of the village itself. The main road was at that time the so-called Cassia road, which cross the valley under Monteriggioni on the west side of it: so the towers are on that side. Unfortunately nowadays the main road is the joining road Siena -Florence on the east side of the valley! Anyway, for us Monteriggioni is beautiful how it is…

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Abbadia Isola

Close to Monteriggioni, so close that from there you can reach it in one-hour walk, there is a nice church called in a funny way Abbadia Isola (Island Church). It is so called not because surrounded by the sea, which from here it is really far away, but because around the XI century AD, there were a lot of marshes all around the church and the monastery, so that these two buildings seemed to stay as an island. Until nowadays you will find that the fields surrounding the church are really flat and they are plantations of wheat, sunflowers and forage. All around, there are just three trees: the soil is still clayey and it would be difficult for any kind of tree to resist. If you go there in July, when the area is so full of sunflowers to be astonishing beautiful, you could make pleasant walks through the fields and the country lanes, without hurry having Monteriggioni in front of you and the church behind. If you would teach your children to drive a bike this is the right place!

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Colle Val d'Elsa

As its name shows this village is situated on the Elsa River which flows straight to the bigger Arno River. Along the Elsa banks there are many villages, as Poggibonsi and Certaldo, but Colle has a special relationship with this river. Since the oldest times, they say also before XI century AD, Colle's villagers found a system to exploit Elsa's waters by channels which brought the waters through different directions, so that the water flow faster and made the water - mills work.
These channels were called gore and in Colle there are two bigger: one is called Lombrandina, which goes beneath Spugna (a locality where there is a church) and the other one is called Piazza which, as the name says, crossed the main square.
In those time until the nineteenth century a big quantity of paper and woollen mills grew in the surroundings of Colle, so that Colle became well known for its paper's production. Nowadays the gore are closed and empty because they were becoming dangerous buildings: waters run very fast and if someone falls on them for sure he could have a difficult time. One of the places where you still can see them are the Pieve in Piano's washing courtyards used still few years ago until the washing machine's eve came. Colle people stopped to produce paper and nowadays their factories' main productions are crystal manufactures; nowadays instead of being within the dump fresh gore they get hottest winds in front of the burning ovens!

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Poggibonsi

Poggibonsi, a really peculiar name: isn't it? It means just Poggio Bonizzo, Good Hillock, and it has a very original story too. This town it is at the northern border of Siena administrative territories. After it, Florence administrative area starts. You should know that during the XI century AD it was almost the same: but in those times this territorial division means troubles..
Poggibonsi, the small town on the Elsa banks was called Borgo Marturi, how today is named a road, and Poggio Bonizzo was, it is clear, a hillock nearby. They say it was a new village built for defence needs (because the previous village was in the open valley) and it was full of churches, fountains and it had a nice street market with nice and good things to buy. But the villagers had an orrible rebellious character: they preferred to became ally of Siena instead of obeying to Florence and day by day, the fightings ended with the full destruction of Poggibonsi in 1270, just after few years more than a hundred of existence. Of those times it rests only the fairies' fountain. The survivors came back to Borgo Marturi, considering that they could stay safer on the open valley. But they took with them the name and they kept it until today.

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