![]() ![]() 320 bus, which leaves outside the station every half-hour. If you are traveling during the truffle festival, shuttles to town will be available if you are there on a nonfestival day, you can take the No. You may be offered a route with a change at Empoli, which will not be difficult, but there are also many direct trains headed for Pisa, La Spezia or Livorno. Train: Buy a ticket to San Miniato-Fucecchio. Essenza also has some tables on a terrace, and offers wine and snacks all day and a full menu. The butcher shop on the main street, Sergio Falaschi, offers housemade salami to buy and take home a restaurant in back has a spectacular open terrace looking out on the hills. During truffle festival time, you’ll find stalls and delicacies everywhere, but the town is also full of restaurants serving local cuisine, some of which take advantage of the same hilltop vistas you saw from the tower. You can pay to climb the tower for a great view of cultivated fields, cypress trees and hill towns.Īll this should help you work up an appetite. ![]() This is a rebuilt structure - the original, built for the Holy Roman Emperor around 1220, was destroyed during World War II. If you head uphill from the cathedral, you will quickly (if breathlessly) find yourself at the Rocca di Federico II, or Frederick’s Tower. The 16th-century wooden altar in the oratory includes the scene of San Miniato’s martyrdom, and there are wonderful early Renaissance frescoes on the walls, with scenes from the life of Jesus on the ceiling, David peers down, holding Goliath’s head, accompanied by one of the classical sybils and the Four Evangelists. ![]() In the nearby Palazzo Communale, or town hall, close to the cathedral, is the Loretino Oratory, a small chapel dedicated to the Madonna of Loreto, which originally contained a much-venerated crucifix from the beginning of the 15th century. This incident was used in the 1982 movie, “The Night of the Shooting Stars,” by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. During World War II, on July 22, 1944, the Germans gathered local people into the church, which was then hit by an artillery shell from the U.S. There is a beautiful bell tower, the Torre di Matilde, named for a powerful Tuscan countess from the Middle Ages, who, according to legend, was born nearby. From there, walk uphill for five to 10 minutes into town, and you’ll soon find yourself in the Piazza della Repubblica, admiring the beautiful frescoed facade of the seminary, built in 1650, which surrounds most of the piazza.Ī staircase will take you up to the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and San Genesio, which dates to the 12th century the facade is remarkable for inset ceramic plates from North Africa used as decorative elements (the originals are in the cathedral museum). There’s a tourist information office in Piazza del Popolo. In the apse of San Lorenzo in Marradi, you will find her at the Madonna’s right hand. Up through the Middle Ages, she was the patron saint of Florence (the Duomo replaced a church dedicated to Santa Reparata). The Maestro was probably a pupil of Domenico Ghirlandaio, and he originally painted these paintings for the Abbey of Marradi, which was dedicated to Santa Reparata, a young virgin - in some stories, only 11 years old - who was tortured and martyred for her faith in the third century. Before you cross the river into town, you will pass the neoclassical, 18th-century church of San Lorenzo, where you’ll find paintings by the Maestro di Marradi, or Master of Marradi, an anonymous painter working at the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th. Take the five-minute stroll from the train station, pausing, perhaps, to eat a chestnut fritter. On the train ride there (see below for information), you’ll pass olive groves, cypress trees and hill towns. But visiting any day of the week will immerse you in chestnut season.Ībout 28 miles northeast of Florence, Marradi is in a broad green valley called the Mugello, which claims connections to both Giotto and Dante. On Sundays in October the Tuscan town of Marradi holds its chestnut festival, with food stalls, music and the pervasive scent of chestnuts roasting. ![]()
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