Twenty-two days of one journey. Day six
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Of course, not at random, of course, I spent a long time and persistently studying cities and choosing a route to them, looking for free parking lots on Google maps, even laying walking routes past the sights. It all remained somewhere in the depths of my memory.
As the well-known character of Ilf and Petrov said “bonjour” or “guten morgen” in the morning, I gave my wife “giorno” in pure Italian - this is how the Tuscans, Ligurians, Lombards greet in the morning (I don’t know about others yet), “ bongiorno means "have a nice day". This meant that I was already happy, and after breakfast I would find bliss with a cup of espresso. Only after, during breakfast, lunch - in no case, it will offend any Italian, I happened to observe it, it was unpleasant to watch how upset the waiters were,
serving pasta and coffee at the same time.
The way Italians prepare coffee (in any conditions), no one cooks it - just for this I am ready to come to Italy for half a day. . . After visiting it, I have three places left outside the house where you can trust me to make coffee .
Volterra is only 20 km away.
Route to Volterra
We drove slowly along a narrow road, obeying the signs and intuition, climbing the serpentines up the hills to the villages, old fortresses, farms that were not marked on the maps. It's very beautiful there!
A couple of kilometers before the city, a steep climb began with a couple of dozen 180-degree turns (serpentine), this is what the "doctor ordered", Transfegerash remembered, the car could not be kept on the Tuscan "swill"...
Easily from memory I found a parking lot with white markings, the only free place on it, became.
At the exit, I noticed a sign with a “discriminatory” inscription - it is forbidden for everyone (“eccetto residenti dei settori”), except for residents of this sector of the city. He started up, drove back, stood, clinging to the fence, behind the cars of local residents, turning the front wheels all the way - so you can’t lasso a tow truck. It was superfluous, no one evacuates cars if there is no parking ban, tourists are not offended.
The city was entered through the Marcoli gate "Porta Marcoli".
We walked along the walls of the Medici fortress (Fortezza Medicea). . .
. . . laid down 500 years ago. e. , like Volterra herself.
They searched for an entrance to the fortress for a long time, found it, but quickly went away - there is a prison. We entered the cozy park "Enrico Fiumi". . .
In the park
. . . where they bought five half-liters of water for 6 euros in a cafe and left the park past the ancient excavations of the Etruscan city. This is the main event of our stay in Italy, as it turned out later, already at home in Ukraine. For only five euros, you can get to the excavation area to the three thousand-year-old ruins, which at first glance do not represent anything interesting. But we, having walked about fifty or a hundred meters, at the same time gave out - Troy, so the ancient foundations of the houses looked like those that happened to be seen twice in Turkey, the location and size of the theater (it can be seen from the road viale Franco Porretti) were almost an exact copy of the Trojan or Ephesus. But Troy is older - he read at home that many historians and archaeologists had the same opinion, and that the Etruscans come from Asia Minor.
Whatever it was, but Rome appeared after Etruria (Tuscany, Tuscany - the Etruscans were called Tusks), its architecture, art, form of government were borrowed from the Etruscans, and Volterra was one of the main cities of the ancient mysterious people who laid the foundation for The Roman Empire and all of Europe in the end. In other words, we stood in the place where the development of European civilization began, without exaggeration, and for only 5 euros. He made this conclusion himself, but so far no one has disputed it, except for Comrade Dugin, according to whom the Etruscans are Russians who came to Italy from the territories between modern Chelyabinsk and Astrakhan, in other words, “Toskananash”.
We went to Piazza dei Priori, on the way we wanted to stop by Palazzo Viti.
Saw the sign, but decided on the way back (forgotten, of course).
On the square there are Duomo (rear part), Palazzo Vescovile,
The Palazzo Pretorio against which the pig's tower nestled.
From a distance it looks like a pig, but close up it looks like a fat she-wolf. . .
. . . previously known as the Tower of the Podestà (mayor), Palazzo dei Priori. . .
. . . which has become the standard for Siena, Florence and many other palazzos, it is the "oldest" of all analogues in Italy, the Savings Bank of Volterra.
By the way, the Etruscans had a sculpture of a she-wolf, then the Romans planted Romulus and Remus. We went to the store-museum of alabaster products.
To the Prior's Palace.
Entrance fee is 10 euros, they didn’t let you climb the tower - a special tour, but we managed to capture the panoramic beauty.
And a couple of fighter jets over Tuscany.
Wandering the streets is also cool.
Every now and then you come across churches, the facades of houses, doors and windows of different buildings, courtyards stop your eyes. Yes, do not forget to look into the Italian courtyards. . .
. . . there you will find oases with palm trees, fountains, frescoes, even paintings on the walls.
Here is one of the courtyards, the door is 150 years old:
And to the right of it they saw a bronze plaque with the image of Giordano Bruno:
And the house itself turned out to be the Fattorini Palace (Palazzo Fattorini), one of whose owners was somehow related to the prototype of the Mona Lisa (La Gioconda). And they saw the Baptistery, and half a dozen churches that were understandable and not very clear.
Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta:
Closed for repairs, but there is something to look at even without it.
Read the latest news.
More panorama:
A couple more photos:
The water ran out, the head began to grow, both from the heat and from the impression, we decided that enough was enough. We went to a pizzeria.
Then we bought a magnet to the store (there were 15 of them brought from Italy). Let's go look for a car, you can cool off in it and get to the interesting city San Gimignano, only 30 km.
About 15.00 he appeared on the horizon.
Also on a hill, recognizable like no other city - a dozen and a half towers as beacons for travelers. And around Tuscany, and every time you can not take your eyes off her.
We drove around a small town in 15 minutes in search of free parking, we didn’t find it,
we drove into a toll road, where, after waiting about twenty minutes, we waited for a place to become free and squeezed in without protruding beyond the marking lines - we couldn’t get out of the car, the doors didn’t open to the required wideness, gave it a little forward, let my wife out with things, and then he himself as much as possible pressed against the passenger door of a neighbor with his left side. Crawling, wriggling as it were, he crawled out through the right door onto the asphalt, got to the back of the car (it was as wide as possible there), got up, then everything went as it should.
How is the entry, payment and exit from the parking. In front of the barrier, by pressing the terminal button, you get a token, the barrier opens. Returning to the parking lot, drop the token into the payment terminal, pay by credit card or cash (2 euros / hour, 15 minutes of the next hour are not taken into account), get change if required, get the token back and go to the car. You have ten minutes to leave,
in front of the barrier, you give the token to the terminal, the barrier rises - that's it. Please note that after such standing, scratches on the car doors are guaranteed, accept this as an additional payment for pleasures in Italy, scratches are easily eliminated. If you happen to arrive on horseback, then there will be no problems “parking” it - there are a lot of different parking devices on the walls of buildings, and you don’t have to pay - there are no prohibition signs.
When I entered the old city, I only knew that it was over two thousand years old and included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and that 700 years ago, a plague had destroyed more than two-thirds of the city's population. I believe that ordinary tourists do not need to fill their heads with information that is unlikely to ever come in handy, and I will not copy here from Wikipedia texts that are available to everyone. There should be a little intrigue, a mystery that encourages you to see and appreciate with your own eyes.
Therefore, let's go, peering into the creations of human hands, looking into the courtyards...
. . . and shops.
To the Dorando" restaurant. . .
. . . awarded the Michelin emblem, but which did not tell me anything - almost all such establishments in Italy are worthy of awards. Fifteen kilometers from San Gimignano is the city where Pinocchio was "born".
His many descendants reached here. On the central square everything is right, everything is right, everything pleases the eyes of numerous tourists, some of them smoke.
In the queue for ice cream, having devoured it and wiped the muzzle of the face, they throw napkins under their feet (even the Airedale Terrier, who had lost his thoroughbredness, did not allow himself such a thing). By the way, the queue for ice cream is not without reason - "Gelateria Dondoli" of the two-time world champion in the preparation of this product, it is really tasty, the largest selection that I have ever seen in my life. And in the city, as we were told in the shop, they make the best white wine in Tuscany Vernaccia. There is a well on the square for collecting money, like to return, they threw different euro cents into it, but they disappeared among thousands of others, took out two five-hryvnia bills.
It's a completely different matter, but someone even donated a glasses case for creativity.
The towers are interesting, but look better from afar. Two of them are exactly the same, like twins,
in one tower they noticed signs of human habitation.
The heat of August is tiring, the endless stream of tourists, it is almost impossible to take a photo without catching a dozen or two unfamiliar faces in the lens, always looking at you at that moment. We didn't go to the Museo Torture" torture museum.
Leaving the center, we stopped at the Sanjiminyan Alimentari.
We bought a bottle of Vernacce, a kilo of grapes, some prosciutto crudo (the diameter of the sausage in the photo is forty centimeters), two hundred grams of parmesan, a loaf of bread, 1 liter of juice and something from milk - for dinner, only 14 euros, ate everyone, everyone drank too. I recommend everyone to do the same
but try to do better, including, of course, San Gimignano!
Tomorrow we will try not to do anything, not to go anywhere.
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