Victor Esteves

I need some help to plain a 3 weeks trip in Italy by car. I want to know medieval small cities in Italy. Can you help me? <BR>

Martha

Victor-- If you look at a map of Italy, you can see that a diagonal band across the country, with Ravenna on the Northeast and Viterbe on the Southwest, has many of the very best medieval cities-- Lucca, Siena, Assisi, Florence, of course, and my personal favorite, San Gimignano. Plus, our impression driving through Tuscany was that every, little village was built around a medieval core. We loved exploring by car. <BR>Are you familiar with the Blue Guide series of guidebooks? They aren't as good as general guides like Fodors for accommodations, but they have very detailed information on architecture. They put out a guidebook for Florence alone. <BR>It sounds like you should have an absolutely super trip! Martha <BR>

Anna

Go to ricksteves.com and look at his country by country information, read about Civita di Bagnoregio. It is incredible, you can only reach it by a footbridge. Only about 15 residents still live there. One of the old women showed us her centuries old olive press for a small fee (maybe L1500). <BR>

kam

Almost every city in Northern Italy is medieval in part! All of the above suggestions are very good. Add Verona, Ferrara and two little known towns (very small), Marostica with almost intact walls and Cittadella, which contains the Tower of Malta from which prisoners used to be thrown to their deaths. Also close by is Este, once of the most beautiful walled towns. Very close to there is Montagnana, walls built in the 13th C. In Tuscany besides the wonderful Lucca, San Gimignano, there is also Monteriggione with many intact towers, Siena (larger but very medieval as many of the inhabitants died during the plague and time stood still for a long time), Arezzo is worth a visit, and Caprese Michelangelo, the birthplace of Michelangelo. Farther south in Umbria is Assisi, worth a day, and then down to Orvieto which is not just medieval, but also has Etruscan ruin from pre Roman times. To my way of thinking the medieval part of Italy then stops at Rome so I would focus on the north. In addition to the Blue Guide, "Driving Tours of Italy" published by Prentice Hall Press has good maps and itinerary suggestions. Just be careful no to try to do too much or they all blur together after a while. <BR>

andy

I agree with the above recommendations on Tuscany. Although a little larger than some of the other cities mentioned, Siena was our favorite city of our Europe trip. <BR>

Victor Esteves

Thanks a lot for the replies. I intend to arrive in Italy by car coming from Geneve in the beginning of february. Is the wheather in february good to visit these Medieval cities? Are there much rain on february in the north of Italy?

kam

It can be rainy and quite cool, although so will Geneva be. Definitely plan to bring a raincoat/jacket and heavier clothes. What you pack for Geneva will work in northern Italy. And, the good news is very few tourists! <BR>

Richard

Victor; Tuscany is fine, but if you want old, visit Puglia, the "heel and spur" of Italy. 2 places to visit are Alberobello and Vieste, not many Americans, all menus in Italian and German. Don't overlook Sicily. If you don't like rustic, stick to Tuscany, Civita di Bagnoregio is a gem, Volterra is lovely, stay in the Conventa Sant' Andrea. <BR>

Marica

I don't know how medieval you want to get, but over on the Adriatic side, just south of Venice, is the town of Ravenna. When Constantine moved the empire to Constantinople(modern Istanbul) after his victory over his co-emperor in 313, he began the final retreat from Rome, as it were. Eventually the capitol was in Milan, and then in Ravenna. Rulers came and went, power waxed and waned. Then Justinian came to the throne in Constantinople in the early 6th century. He exercised fabulous power - and emphasized it with a major building campaign of churches throughout the empire. <BR> Ravenna was the primary capital and seat of the Exarchate - the Emperor's representative in Italy. It is at this period that the magnificent double octagonal church of San Vitale was built. It has incredible mosaics - the mosaics were most certainly done by artisans from the capitol in Constantinople. <BR> There has been much scholarly debate about why this church is round - and you often find the explanation that it comes from Roman temples, antique tomb structures or early Christian baptisteries. A more likely explanation is that it comes from imperial throne rooms - because this church has its entrance aligned with the palace of the exarchate. In that sense it is related to the magnificent church of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, a small group of other less well known and less preserved churchs. The hagia Sophia was also an imperial church, attached directly to the imperial palace. Nearby San Vitale in Ravenna is the tomb of Galla Placidia, an earlier member of the imperial family, and the Orthodox and Arian Baptistry buildings - all of them with mosaics from the 4th-6th centuries. The reason to be excited by all this - is not only because they are wonderful and old and in good preservation, but because so much from this early medieval era has been destroyed, by war, by time, by carelessness - and in the 7th century, deliberately. <BR> The Byzantine church went through the Iconoclastic Controversy, for about a century and a half, starting in the 7th century. Early in the controvsery, images were banned as idolotrous, and most of the magnificent Constantinian and Justinianic mosaics in Constantinople (Istanbul) were destroyed (along with a lot of other stuff). We only know how incredible they must have been by those that survived in the more remote provincial areas - distance is sometimes a good thing! <BR> Just outside Ravenna, to the south, is the 4-6th century basilican church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo. Also with wonderful wonderful mosaics in the early Christian style (closely related to the mosaics in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome - all of the imagery derived, at least in style, from 4th century illuminations in Bibles). <BR> I hesitate to say that not many people visit this area - but certainly far fewer than go to Tuscany and the other major sites of Northern Italy. It is truly worth a visit. If you want a bit of fun history, you can drive on down the coast to the tiny city-state of San Marino - an independent country on a hill within Italy. <BR> <BR>Happy adventuring.

Don Stadler

I lived in northern Italy for 18 months and got around quite a bit. Here are my favorites in order: <BR> <BR>Siena, Ravenna, Palermo (in Sicily), Assisi, Verona, Padua, Spoleto, Sirmione. <BR> <BR>There are many others as well. In Umbria stay away from Perugia and you cannot miss. The same for Tuscany. Venice, Florence, and Rome aren't really medieval, because as great capitals they tended to get updated to Renissance-era architecture. Cities like Ravenna, Verona, and Siena which were great in the Middle Ages but later conquered became backwaters and retained much of their medieval flavor. <BR> <BR>Venice is wonderful, but you don't need or want a car there. Florence is very impressive but too many tourists. Siena has much more charm. Bergamo Alta (Upper city) near Milan is great, too. Try a hotel named the Agnello D'Oro (Golden Lamb) there. Wonderful.