Certaldo - An Interlude in the Tuscan Hills

On Friday we decided to explore some of the countryside surrounding Florence. On the way back from the trip to Siena on Wednesday, we’d noticed a lovely looking little town, about halfway between Florence and Siena, named Certaldo. The buildings around the train station looked nice and we could see there was an older collection of buildings on top of one of the surrounding hills that looked iconic-ally Tuscan to our eyes. I did a little bit of research on the Internet and found that, though Certaldo was sometimes mentioned in a search of "Tuscan hill towns", there was an obviously even more iconic Tuscan town with towers and everything, closer to Siena, named San Gimignano, a trip to which involved getting off the train at Poggibonsi (great name!) and catching a bus, but we decided Certaldo was easier and would maybe be quieter and we felt like having a nice, relaxed day; another clincher was that the writer, Boccaccio, was born and died in Certaldo and maybe wrote the Decameron there during the black death of 1347.

The Funicular

We got the 10.10am Siena train from Firenze SMN, which arrived at Certaldo at 11am precisely. My researches had informed me that a funicular railway takes passengers to the top of the hill so we ambled aimlessly up the street of this sleepy little town until serendipity brought us to a sign saying “Funicolare” with a funny little train symbol. 3 Euro got us both a ride up in the crowded small railway and we arrived at the walled town.

There were very few tourists about and the local tourist-related businesses were just beginning to open up shop. The atmosphere was lovely and relaxed and we imagined immediately that we were pilgrims a thousand years ago as we walked through the narrow streets and looked at the thousand year old brick walls, some with grape vines growing all over.

The museum and info centre was staffed by a lovely lady who was more French than Italian in her courteous customer-service skills (staff in the Uffizi and other Italian establishments we’ve visited almost always seemed unfriendly and uninterested). This lady was charming and warm and told us a bit about the place and that the price of the ticket included a look at Giovanni Boccaccio’s house and entrance to the Palazzo Pretorio right at the top of the hill. Unfortunately most of the upstairs section of Boccaccio’s house was closed because of a conference so the lady gave us a discount on our tickets. The house was reconstructed after being destroyed by British bombs in WW2 and while the exhibition was interesting, the Palazzo Pretorio had a lot more to offer.

The following is from the photocopied guidesheet to the Palace: “The structure we see today is the result of many centuries of building and change from the feudal castle of the counts of Alberti of Prato. In early 1400 it was the seat of the Florentine Republic Vicarship and housed local government - the courts, jail and judicial administration. It represented the civil power that counterbalanced the Church power, in the form of the Church of St Thomas, connected to the building with an arch and a fishbone pathway. The severe and prohibitive facade interlacves with simple windows and the colourful family crests made of terracotta and stone. It recalls a small world on the great river of history.” Boccaccio died here in 1375.

We visited the old jail and there was one cell that had been used as a torture chamber and had a very creepy and sad feel to it. There was an exhibition of modern sculptures spread throughout, something you see a lot of in Italy.

Net in the jail


Mugshot of a typical Tuscan 14th century criminal


Modern art interspersed with medieval

As we sat down to another bland Tuscan meal (I had pasta with wild mushrooms and the whole dish had no flavour of any kind whatsoever so I had to smother it with parmesan cheese; it seems Tuscan cuisine is very bland to us salt-lovers as we’ve never had a good meal the whole time we’ve been here. Maybe you have to pay a lot to eat well. The Tuscan bread is made without salt so perhaps they just prefer low-salt taste?), I consulted the train times between Florence and Siena - the timetable didn’t list any of the stops between and calculated that there should be a train stopping at Certaldo and returning to Florence at 2pm. Then we got talking to a couple who I’d thought were Italian but it turned out they were Dutch and were a lovely couple and so time went quickly as we chatted away about Italy and travel and Holland and languages and Australia and distances, etc. The restaurant staff were eyeing us in a way that suggested they wanted our table for new customers and I realised that we’d better get going as we had to catch the funicular and then walk to Certaldo station by 2pm. We made it onto the train with about 2 seconds to spare and got back to Florence at 2.50 pm. Then it was back to the hotel for a freshen up and then off for more strolling to Piazza della Signoria, where all the great sculptures are, then on to Ponte Vecchio and the huge Palazzo Pitti, then back near our hotel for dinner at some restaurant where I had a bland pizza and some really crap wine - so far the house wines in France, Spain and Italy have been fine for my non-oenophile taste but I could recognise that this really was a horrible drop; I only just managed to finish it. And so to bed, for tomorrow we planned to have a closer look at the Palazzo Pitti.

Sculpture in the Piazza della Signoria


View from the Ponte Vecchio