Destinations

Art Town Hill-top town Tuscan Countryside

Certaldo

Certado Alta (from the latin “hill covered by oaks”) is a delightful medieval village on top of a hill north of San Gimignano, under Florence province. In the seventeenth century the village expanded in the lower plain along the river Elsa. Site of a settlement in Etruscan times, it became a feudal castle during the Middle Ages after the passage of Federico I “Barbarossa” who converted it into a major vicarage. Since then, the palace was the residence of  705 vicars, and became the most important political and judicial centre of Val d’Elsa, Val di Pesa and Val d’Arno until the Republican period and the Medici. The passage of the Via Francigena made the trade increasing, attracting rich merchants and important families, including the family of Giovanni Boccaccio, Machiavelli and the Arena.

The upper town can be reached from the lower town by climbing the ancient and evocative steep streets of Costa Alberti and Costa Vecchia, or by the modern cableway offering magnificent views of San Gimignano and  of  the surrounding countryside. The town consists in fact of a street lined with tower-hoises and palaces in brick, among which history also records the one where, onDecember 21, 1375, Boccaccio died having retired here to spend his last years; it is now the site of the National Study Center dedicated to him. The nearby church of Santi Jacopo e Filippo, with 14th century frescoes and two la Robbia tabernacles, contains his cenottaph. At the top of the street, the highest point in the town, rises the Palazzo Pretorio, with facade adorned with magistrates heraldic devices. Around the atrium are a number of frescoed interiors, utilized for shows and exhibitions while flanking the palace in the former church of Santi Tommaso e Prospero, has been recomposed the tabernacle of the Condemned Men, with a cycle of frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli (1466-67)

We suggest you to visit the ceramic and printing workshops and not to be missed in July Mercantia, a street music and theatre festival.

---