Certaldo

Certaldo is the town Giovanni Boccaccio chose as his home, and the brick towers of its hilltop borgo still rise as they do in the backgrounds of Tuscan paintings. A tiny 1929 funicular carries visitors up from the modern lower town to medieval palaces, frescoed facades and the house where the author of the Decameron lived and died.

Why visit

Certaldo offers what larger Tuscan towns cannot: a complete medieval hilltop settlement where local life continues uninterrupted by mass tourism. The upper borgo, Certaldo Alto, keeps its thirteenth- and fourteenth-century texture intact — a vicars’ palace painted with coats of arms, churches holding the tombs of its most famous son, and lanes where residents still hang laundry between brick houses. Because Boccaccio settled here, the town holds a literary weight out of proportion to its size: his house is a museum, his tomb lies in the parish church, and his stories drew on local characters, including the celebrated Certaldo onion. Travellers who want Florence’s medieval atmosphere without Florence’s queues, twenty minutes away by train, find it here.

Character and history

Settlement on this hill goes back to Etruscan times, but Certaldo grew with the Middle Ages as a seat of the Alberti counts and then as the administrative centre of the Valdelsa under Florentine rule — the post of vicar brought judges and officials whose memory covers the Palazzo Pretorio’s walls in painted heraldry. Giovanni Boccaccio was born in Florence in 1313 but made Certaldo his own house and, near the end of his life, his permanent home; he worked here on his writings and died in 1375, and the town has kept his memory ever since. The borgo survived the centuries with unusual wholeness, damaged but not destroyed in the Second World War and carefully restored. The little funicular opened in 1929 to link the lower town to the hill and remains one of the oldest such lines in Tuscany. Each July the Mercantia festival fills every corner of the village with street theatre, and September brings a Decameron-inspired historical re-enactment.

What to see

Start at Boccaccio’s House (Casa del Boccaccio), rebuilt after wartime damage and now the seat of the national foundation dedicated to the writer, with a museum, archive and library devoted to his life and works. The Palazzo Pretorio (Civic Museum), the borgo’s most important monument, began as the residence of the Alberti counts in the late twelfth century and later housed the Florentine vicars; its facade and courtyards display coats of arms of nearly every vicar alongside fifteenth- and sixteenth-century frescoes and sinopites. Beside the parish church, the Museum of Sacred Art of Certaldo occupies a fifteenth-century Augustinian convent, and the neighbouring Church of Saints James and Philip holds Boccaccio’s tomb. The modest Church of Saints Thomas and Prospero, the oldest in the castle, shelters Gozzoli’s Tabernacolo dei Giustiziati. Down in the lower town, the Nail Museum (Museo del Chiodo) records the town’s unexpected industrial past in a historic nail-making district. The Certaldo Funicular itself deserves the short ride for the view over the roofs as it climbs the cliff.

How to experience

Take the funicular up on arrival and let the borgo unfold on foot — Certaldo Alto is small, quiet and best read slowly, palazzo by palazzo. Buy the combined museum ticket that links Casa Boccaccio with the Palazzo Pretorio and the Museum of Sacred Art; it costs little and supports the museum system. Linger over lunch in the shadow of the vicars’ palace, ordering dishes that use the local red onion, the “cipollotto” Certaldese that even Boccaccio mentioned. Readers should time a visit to Mercantia in July, when buskers and performers take over the lanes for several evenings. Photographers will find the brick facades best in late afternoon light, from the rampart walk at the borgo’s edge.

Practical planning

Certaldo sits on the regional rail line between Florence and Siena, about an hour from Florence by train; the station and lower town lie below the hill, with the funicular station a short walk away. Cars stay in parking lots at the foot of the borgo — the upper streets are pedestrian. Museums follow split schedules with winter closures and reduced weekly opening, so check current days and times on the museum system’s pages before travelling. Spring and autumn are ideal; July brings Mercantia crowds and booked rooms, winter brings quiet and shorter hours. Comfortable shoes matter: the borgo is cobbled and gently steep throughout.

Nearby places

The Valdelsa road runs to Greve in Chianti over the hills to the east, gateway to the Chianti Classico wine country, while Florence and Siena bracket the town at either end of the rail line for easy day trips.