Torre e Casa Campatelli
San Gimignano is a town of towers. Of the survivors, only one still rises hollow inside as it was built — the Torre Campatelli, joined to a family house that opens its rooms onto eight centuries of the skyline.
At a glance
The Torre e Casa Campatelli stands on Via San Giovanni, the main street of San Gimignano, the Tuscan hill town whose medieval towers are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The tower was raised in the mid-twelfth century and rises about 28 metres; it is the only one in the town to have kept its original single interior volume, empty from floor to top. The Campatelli, a Florentine family of entrepreneurs and landowners, joined it to a residence in the early nineteenth century. Lydia Campatelli left the whole complex to FAI in 2005, on condition that it stay open to the public.
Key facts
- Location: Via San Giovanni 15, San Gimignano, province of Siena, Tuscany
- Tower: mid-12th century, about 28 metres high
- Distinction: the only San Gimignano tower to keep its original interior volume
- House: created by the Campatelli family, Florentine landowners, in the early 1800s
- Bequeathed to FAI: 2005, by Lydia Campatelli, with the condition of public access
- Collections: Montelupo ceramics and paintings by Guido Peyron (1898–1960)
History
In the Middle Ages San Gimignano bristled with tower houses, raised by competing families as stores, refuges and statements of wealth on the road to Rome. Many were later lowered or absorbed into other buildings; a famous group still stands. The Torre Campatelli, built around the middle of the twelfth century, is unusual in keeping its full original height of some 28 metres and, alone among the towers, its hollow internal volume.
The Campatelli family, Florentine entrepreneurs and landowners, acquired the complex in the early nineteenth century and turned it into an upper-class residence beside the tower. They furnished the rooms and gathered the objects and pictures that the house still holds.
In 2005 Lydia Campatelli bequeathed the property to FAI, stipulating that it remain open to the public. The trust has kept the noble floor as a furnished home and used the tower itself to tell the wider story of San Gimignano.
What you see
The noble floor is shown as a lived-in house, furnished with the Campatelli family’s own objects, photographs and art, including Montelupo ceramics and paintings by Guido Peyron (1898–1960), an uncle of the family. The rooms give a rare sense of how San Gimignano’s grander houses were inhabited well into the twentieth century.
The tower is the climax. Because its interior was never subdivided, visitors can read its full height in a single space, and a film projected on the upper walls tells the thousand-year story of the town and its towers, and of the UNESCO recognition that protects them.
Practical information
- Opening hours are seasonal; check the FAI website before visiting
- Visits include the house and the film in the tower
- San Gimignano is busy in high season; come early or late in the day
Getting there
San Gimignano has no railway station; the nearest are Poggibonsi and Certaldo, with bus connections to the town. By road it is reached from the Florence–Siena superstrada via Poggibonsi. The historic centre is pedestrian; Via San Giovanni runs up from the southern gate.
Nearby
- Piazza della Cisterna and Piazza del Duomo, with the Collegiata frescoes
- The famous group of medieval towers around the main squares
- Certaldo Alto — the brick hill town of Boccaccio, a short drive north
Sources
- FAI – Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano, “Torre e Casa Campatelli.” fondoambiente.it.
- UNESCO World Heritage List, “Historic Centre of San Gimignano,” 1990.
- Hero image: 2016 Campatelli and Cugnanesi towers, by Jordiferrer, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Coordinates verified against OpenStreetMap / Nominatim (43.46469, 11.04260).
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