{"id":6536,"date":"2006-08-13T14:19:10","date_gmt":"2006-08-13T14:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/overrunning-san-gimignano.html"},"modified":"2006-08-13T14:19:10","modified_gmt":"2006-08-13T14:19:10","slug":"overrunning-san-gimignano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/overrunning-san-gimignano.html","title":{"rendered":"Overrunning San Gimignano"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because we continue to read about tourism in Italy, with the hope of returning sooner rather than later, today, from the NYTimes: "Hit and run" tourism in the tiny town of San Gimignano<\/a>. <\/p>\n

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\u201cSome people, jokingly, say that we have to get out of the \u2018Bermuda Triangle,\u2019 a reference to the hordes of tourists in sandals and shorts who migrate between St. Peter\u2019s in Rome<\/span><\/a>, the Uffizi in Florence<\/span><\/a> and Piazza San Marco in Venice<\/span><\/a>,\u201d said Francesco Rutelli, deputy prime minister and culture minister. \u201cWe want the world to discover Italy<\/span><\/a>\u2019s hamlets, with their historic artistic, cultural and religious itineraries, and the local handicrafts. This Italy has extraordinary productive and economic potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in San Gimignano, some feel the town\u2019s popularity is too much of a good thing. <\/p>\n

It takes less than 15 minutes to cross the roughly 900-by-500-yard historic center at a leisurely stroll. Mass tourism came here at the end of the 1970\u2019s, said one local official, growing at a 5 to 10 percent rate each year. In no time the 1,400 residents living in the historic center were overrun by outsiders.<\/p>\n

The city is also a popular site for school class tours, which has only compounded the problem, especially in the spring months. \u201cI don\u2019t have to tell you that 500 elderly Germans don\u2019t occupy the same space as 500 teenagers who act as they\u2019re supposed to act at their age,\u201d said Mr. Lisi, the mayor. \u201cLong weekends are a tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just can\u2019t handle the numbers,\u201d added Daniele Cappellini, the official responsible for transportation here. In a city equipped to handle 60 tour buses comfortably, last year there were as many as 160 on busy days, he said. \u201cWhen it\u2019s so crowded, tourists don\u2019t even get a sense of what San Gimignano is really like,\u201d Mr. Cappellini added. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Who’s been there? What’s the special appeal of this place for tourists? Is it just because it’s on the way from Florence to Rome? Isn’t Italy filled with small places evoking medieval times and stuffed to the brim with gorgeous churches, mosaics, frescoes, Etruscans and the like?<\/p>\n

More Italian travel in the NYTimes today: Abruzzo:<\/a><\/p>\n

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After a comfortable sleep and a hearty breakfast of homemade jam, bread and cakes, we continued on our quest of ancient sites. Our goal was to find a hermitage or two, Christian monks\u2019 caves that were eventually turned into pilgrimage sites and small churches. In Abruzzi, especially in the Majella Mountains, the hermitic tradition began to flourish around 1000. The most famous of the monks was Pietro del Morrone, who at age 79 in 1294 became Pope Celestine V. He inspired the establishment of the Celestine order and reconstructed many of the Majella hermitage sites. <\/p>\n

WE started with Santo Spiritio, the best known of these sites. From the mountain town of Roccamorice, we continued farther up into the Majella Mountains along a small track, which ended in a parking lot. From there a short path led to a long grass-covered shelf that jutted out beneath the two-story hermitage. <\/p>\n

From our angle beneath it, the ancient stone hermitage looked as if it were about to be swallowed by the side of the mountain. The only sound was of the river far below, the dripping of an old fountain and an occasional birdcall. It wasn\u2019t hard to understand why St. Celestine wanted to get back here so quickly \u2014 he was the only pope to resign. <\/p>\n

Even more serene was our second stop, San Bartolomeo. We parked not far from the Macchie di Coco restaurant and walked from there through a field of wildflowers. After about 20 minutes, we came to some crude steps that led down a steep slope and suddenly dipped through a small natural tunnel. Seconds later, as we readjusted our eyes to the bright light, we found ourselves on a stone shelf about 10 feet wide. Straight ahead was what looked like a tiny house tucked under a roof of stone. <\/p>\n

Tentatively, we walked to and then pushed open the wooden door, imagining we would awake the wrath of a sleeping bear or monk. Instead, we found a cool, empty, three-roomed shrine of stone, with just enough room to stand. Signs of recent pilgrims \u2014 dried flowers, coins and photos \u2014 cluttered the altar. After an hour of exploring, we reluctantly walked back to our car. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A discussion of the first article at the Slow Travel discussion board.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because we continue to read about tourism in Italy, with the hope of returning sooner rather than later, today, from the NYTimes: "Hit and run" tourism in the tiny town of San Gimignano. \u201cSome people, jokingly, say that we have to get out of the \u2018Bermuda Triangle,\u2019 a reference to the hordes of tourists in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nOverrunning San Gimignano - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/overrunning-san-gimignano.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Overrunning San Gimignano - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}