san gimignano traffic
 

My husband and I will be traveling to Italy, next May (for the 1st time) We want to stay in the Tuscany area for 4 to 5 days and are looking for a "home base". I was thinking of San Gimignano. A friend of mine said there is alot of traffic there. We plan on, probably, leaving each day to visit the surrounding towns and then be back in the early evening. There were a couple of agriturismos in San Gimignano that looked very nice. Should we look for another town?

There are NO agritusimos IN San G. It is a small walled town. There are no farms in it. I'm sure you're looking at farms in the surrounding countryside. Do determine how far these places are from the town.

A lot of traffic is a relative term. I went to San Gimignano in May a few years ago and didn't notice a lot of traffic. I was there twice as the first time was a Sunday and the town was crowded so we went back mid week.

If you're from a rural area of Wyoming you would say there was a lot of traffic. If you're from a metro area then the traffic would be light. Consider where your friend is from and how much traffic he/she is used to.

it's agriturismo II Vecchio Maneggio, after looking at their website again, it does say "rolling hills around the medival town of San Gimignano."

My recollection is that only residents can drive in the town. We parked the car outside the town, but that was a long time ago.

Using Google map you will discover that the agriturismo is 5+ km. from the town.

Several years ago we stayed in San Gimignano at Hotel l'Antico Pozzo for 4 nights. We were allowed to drive to the hotel to drop our luggage & then park just outside the walls. We highly recommend staying inside the walls to experience the ambiance of the town early morning and late afternoon/evening when the tour buses and hordes of tourists have left. The hotel still gets good reviews; nearby restaurants are good; it's easy to drive to surrounding towns during the day. We've visited San G on 2 other occasions when we did not stay inside the walls. Staying inside was a much better experience for us.

Get a good guide book on Tuscany.
Get a good map of Tuscany
Determine what you most want to see in Tuscany.
Put pins in you map for those locations.
Pick your base location based on a radius of those pins.

Tuscany is quite large. Your location is key.
I prefer south of Siena for only one location--or pick two locations. San Gim. may not be your best location.

Thanks for all the feedback.

Sorry - perhaps your concern is foot traffic. And yes, the streets of San G do get VERY crowded with pedestrians during the middle of the day when a lot of tours have dropped off their members.

nytraveler is correct that foot traffic is more of a problem than car/bus traffic However,we were there in late June and had no trouble parking quite near the entrance to the town. There were many pedestrians but it really wasn't too crowded like I recall in other years.There are so many wonderful villages to explore near Castellina in addition to SG.