Art and museums in Tuscany: beyond Florence

When one thinks of art in Tuscany, the mind goes immediately to Florence: the Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti, the Baptistery, Santa Croce, the Accademia. But Tuscany is a region where every town of any size has a church with frescoes, a civic museum with medieval panels, a collection assembled by local lords over the centuries.

Those who stop only in Florence see one part, the most famous, of Tuscan art. Those who venture out find something different.

Tuscan art doesn’t end in Florence

The paradox of Tuscan art outside Florence is that the quality is high, but the crowds are almost absent. In the rooms of the Civic Museum of Siena you walk alone before a Simone Martini; in the Collegiata of San Gimignano you admire Ghirlandaio’s frescoes without queuing; in Colle Val d’Elsa you visit the Crystal Museum in complete tranquillity.

This is not second-rate art. It is art of equal quality, in less crowded settings.

In the rooms of the Civic Museum of Siena you walk alone before a Simone Martini. In the Collegiata of San Gimignano you admire Ghirlandaio’s frescoes without queuing. This is not second-rate art - it’s the same quality, without the crowd.

The Civic Museum of Siena: Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti

The Civic Museum of Siena, in the Palazzo Pubblico in Piazza del Campo, is one of the most important medieval museums in Italy. It preserves two fundamental cycles of frescoes:

The Maestà by Simone Martini (1315): the Virgin enthroned on a gold background, surrounded by angels and saints, covering an entire wall of the Sala del Mappamondo. It is one of the most important works of Italian Gothic painting, luminous, refined, with a gentleness that anticipates Renaissance Madonnas by centuries.

In the same room, the equestrian portrait of Guidoriccio da Fogliano, also by Simone Martini, 1328, shows the Sienese commander on horseback before a hilly landscape. It is one of the first realistic portraits in Italian medieval painting.

The Good and Bad Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1338-1340): in the Sala dei Nove, a monumental allegorical cycle that contrasts the well-governed city with the badly governed one. The “Allegory of the Effects of Good Government” contains the oldest realistic representation of an Italian city, with streets, palaces, shops, people working and moving.

Admission to the Civic Museum is included in the combined ticket for Palazzo Pubblico.

San Gimignano: medieval frescoes in the Duomo

The Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta in San Gimignano, the “Duomo” by convention, is one of the richest repositories of medieval painting in Tuscany.

The walls are covered by fresco cycles from the 14th and 15th centuries depicting episodes from the Bible, Old Testament on the left wall, New Testament on the right, with a narrative vitality that has no equal.

The Stories of the Old Testament by Bartolo di Fredi (1367) show vivid scenes, with animals, landscapes, and period costumes. The Stories of Christ attributed to Barna da Siena have a different dramatic intensity.

The Chapel of Santa Fina, at the end of the right nave, is frescoed by Ghirlandaio with scenes from the life of the local saint: it is one of the most delicate and luminous frescoes of the Tuscan Quattrocento.

Colle Val d’Elsa: the Crystal Museum

The Crystal Museum of Colle Val d’Elsa is a museum of applied art - not painting or sculpture, but the history of glass and crystal craftsmanship in this city that produces 15% of the world’s crystal.

The museum is housed in a restored former smelting furnace, which adds an authentic industrial context. The collections show the evolution from medieval glass to modern crystal, with pieces from various eras and techniques.

It is not a grand museum, but it is carefully curated and tells a story of craftsmanship and industry that is an integral part of this city’s identity.

The museums of the Val d’Elsa: small and precious

Beyond the Crystal Museum, the Val d’Elsa has other minor museums worth a visit:

Civic Archaeological Museum of Colle Val d’Elsa: contains Etruscan and Roman finds from the Val d’Elsa area, including materials from local necropolises.

Civic Museum of Certaldo: in the Palazzo Pretorio, with Gothic frescoes and medieval artworks from the area.

Casa del Boccaccio in Certaldo: the house-museum of the author of the Decameron, with manuscripts and documents telling the life of Giovanni Boccaccio.

Civic Museum of Castelfiorentino: small museum with works by Benozzo Gozzoli, one of the most fascinating painters of the Quattrocento, famous for his vivid and colourful narrative cycles.

How to organise an art itinerary in Tuscany

An art itinerary in Tuscany that goes beyond Florence might be:

Day 1: Siena, Civic Museum + Duomo + Piccolomini Library Day 2: San Gimignano, Collegiata + Civic Museum Day 3: Colle Val d’Elsa, Crystal Museum + historic centre; Certaldo, Casa del Boccaccio

From Hotel Alcide in Poggibonsi, all of these destinations are reachable in less than 30 minutes. That is one of the advantages of being at the centre of such an artistically rich territory.