Daily Updates
Week One: Sept. 27
27 September. Sarah Murray reporting: Fall is a season of perpetual change, and though we were tempted, as we awoke on this crisp September morning, to stagnate, go dead, here at the posh hillside resort in San Leonino, the seasonal urge towards migration took hold of our collective wills and we dutifully disembarked, climbing aboard the bus. We were fervent in our continual search for Etruscan Nirvana. After a short drive, we arrived at San Gimignano and emerged from behind the tinted windows of our hot ride and into the searing brightness of reality. Dwarfed by the medieval towers which make the skyline here so widely famed. As though guided by the hand of fate or some nefarious primordial urge, weaving our way through tunnel-like streets and shuffling winded Austrian tour groups, we found the found the main attraction of the town – the Museum of the History of Torture. The gruesome, pulpy punishments doled out to cantankerous housewives and heretics alike are explained and illustrated in the dank halls of this institution, including ‘The Saw’, ‘Death by Squashing’ and, everyone’s favorite, ‘The Iron Maiden’. Certainly worth the five euro entrance fee. We left the Torture museum, and after some indulgent faberge egg shopping of course, got back onto the bus and continued on to Volterra and had a long session of getting smarter in the local archaeological museum, home to innumerable Etruscan burial sarcophagi. Later that evening, we hiked out to the famous vaulted Porta dell’Arco, one of the earliest surviving gates of its kind, and the peripheral necropolis where we took in a beautiful Tuscan sunset. After dinner and a considerable amount of conviviality, both our bellies and intellects round and full, we slept contentedly, with visions of alabaster death masks dancing through our heads.
27 September. Another day aboard the Damibus.
27 September. One of the many hill towns where ceramics run rampant
27 September. A medieval ring for horses' reigns
27 September. Flowers in San Gimignano
27 September. View from the town
27 September. View over the rooftops of San Gimignano
27 September. An elegant palazzo
27 September. Some of the surviving towers of the city
27 September. The Tuscan countryside
27 September. The main piazza
27 September.The Porta del Arco in Volterra
27 September. Enjoying the sunset atop the Etruscan walls
27 September. On the Etruscan walls of Volterra
27 September. View from the walls
27 September. Professor Ulrich surveys the scene