San Gimignano
San Gimignano is a Medieval Manhattan. The city with a hundred towers of which several have withstood time and are still intact today; surviving the wars between two enemy families from the same city that culminated when the defeated and exiled rival family had it’s tower destroyed.
The vertical growth of medieval architecture was principally due to the defensive needs of the city together with the difficulty faced enlarging the perimeter of the defensive walls around the city to accommodate the fast growing population because the cities were almost always perched on the summits of small mountains or high ground. It was also a competition between the most powerful families of the city to build the tallest and most impressive tower. Cities such as Florence and Siena were studded with towers but only the towers of both their town halls remain standing today.
