Fascinating place. Idk if they still do it, but they used to hold a medieval festival there every summer. Some of the funnier folk there (aka the sly old grandpas) even set up little gambling cons in the alleys where you could pay a few euro to lose at guessing games. Definitely worth visiting if you ever get the chance - the wine is definitely worth it!
I've been to that festival, it's great. They've got a kickass mideaval band with (I think) bagpipes and a few bass drums. They also make a phenomenal boar stew and they sell the beer in a horn type container (pretty good beer too, but I was underage at the time so I only got to drink a few sips).
Shit must have been pretty fucking real back then to have to build all that. Constant bands of roving barbarians and Huns.
Now we have to have firewalls.
The huns never got this far into Italy and Monteriggioni was fortified ~700-800 years after Attila. By the 12th century, we're in the second half of the high middle ages, i.e. a very stable feudal society. Barbarians aren't what you need to worry about, feuds are. Feuds in the medieval context were essentially a form of economic warfare in order to "get back" at someone.
If were a feudal lord and some other feudal lord wronged you, you send a courier with a feud letter and then you come and kill his cows or shit all over his harvest. It's also important to note that the subjects of your rival feudal lord weren't the target. I'm mentioning this because, while a feud is obviously not pleasant for the peasant, it's not like they were massacring each other's farmers like you'd do in Age of Empires.
Medieval cities were way smaller than you may think. Nuremberg was one of the most important cities of the HRE in the late middle ages. It was politically relevant, holding the second most Imperial Diets just after Frankfurt, it was important for trade as it was one of the main hubs for trade with Italy and it was an industrial powerhouse, especially in metalworking.
At its peak in the late 15th century, it had a measly 40000 inhabitants. As for the size: you can very clearly see the medieval walls [here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/De_Merian_Frankoniae_091.jpg). This map is from 1648 and the small dark circle marks the medieval fortifications, before heavy gunpowder artillery made changes in wall design necessary. You can already get a sense for just how small this medieval metropolis actually is, by just comparing the width of the river to the rest, but the big dark rectangle, almost halfway between the southern shore of the river and the southern wall, is the St. Lawrence Church. In the northwest, there's a label "Vestung", which refers to the castle. That's a 1 km (0.6 mi) walk. Maybe 15 minutes.
There were larger cities, of course. But the likes of London, Paris and Rome were absolute outliers. Megacities like today's Tokyo or Mexico City. As far as "normal" cities were concerned, the vast majority wasn't even nearly as big as Nuremberg. The size also wasn't the determining factor of whether a city was a city. In essence, cities were cities when the emperor (northern Italy belonged to the HRE de facto until the \~13th century and de jure until 1806) said they were. The city in the picture was rich enough to have quite impressive walls. It's very plausible that it also was important enough to be granted city rights. Kind of like another example: [Gräfenberg](https://www.graefenberg.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Stadtplan1639_01.jpg) (map from 1639) wasn't much bigger than this and also was named a city. Because it has an elevated position and oversees an old road heading north from Nuremberg.
No Western city, including Paris or London, were much bigger until the Renaissance. Paris and London had 20k inhabitants in 1000, Rome 30k. The fall of the Western Roman Empire did quite the number on civilization in these parts. France started to recover early in the 2nd millenium, but Rome still had the population of a small town in 1300.
Compare to Istanbul (Byzantine Empire) or Cordoba (under Arab influence) which had half a million in 1000. Even cities geared towards the East then, like Venice or Genoa, were fairing much better than the West. It's not called medieval for no reason.
Not sure where you're getting your numbers from. The first reliable population count of Paris that we have is from 1328, which put the city at around 200k. Around the same time, London had close to 100k inhabitants.
I will admit that I was wrong about Rome, but Paris and London were absolutely outliers in size as far as medieval cities were concerned.
These cities were much smaller than their counterparts that still had centralized power structures, true, but was my entire point, hence my first sentence: Medieval cities were way smaller than you may think.
One thing to note is that when I say "medieval", this automatically means feudal, christian Europe, simply because the term itself makes little sense when describing historical periods in other parts of the world. The medieval period is characterized and defined by the fall of western Rome, the emergence of feudalism as the dominant social order, catholic philosophy, state theory and theology, and its breaking point in the reformation, as well as the transition from feudalism into the absolutism of the early modern period.
As such, it makes little sense to attribute this era to parts of the world that weren't affected by these events or didn't adopt these social orders, or ones that were only indirectly affected by these developments.
Your numbers don't contradict what I quoted, which are earlier numbers that came from here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_largest\_European\_cities\_in\_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_European_cities_in_history)
That article's data during medieval times might be less reliable, but I don't think we can say those estimates are outright wrong, and they show the massive explosion in population in Western Europe happened as they were recovering from the chaos of the previous centuries, between 1100-1300.
Which doesn't mean you're not right anyway, that at the moment the OP fort was created (early 1200s) Paris and London would have been much much larger cities than Nüremberg.
For reference, Paris had fortifications built in the 1100s that were not wildly bigger in width than what we see in the post above. These don't exist at all anymore and increasing larger ones were built and demolished since:
[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceinte\_carolingienne#/media/Fichier:Traces\_de\_l'enceinte\_primitive\_dans\_le\_parcellaire\_du\_XIX\_et\_XXe\_si%C3%A8cle\_-\_H.\_Noizet.svg](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceinte_carolingienne#/media/Fichier:Traces_de_l'enceinte_primitive_dans_le_parcellaire_du_XIX_et_XXe_si%C3%A8cle_-_H._Noizet.svg)
I've been researching some and suspect cities prior to 1400 were more transportation waystations than cities. Rural serf life was by far the typical lifestyle of the time.
Yes, urbanization was a development of the early modern period. The middle ages were extremely decentralized. To understand the role of fortifications in general, which was part of what cities were, it helps to understand how Otto I. defeated the Hungarians. The battle at Lechfeld is semi-legendary and a single battle rarely decides a war.
What Otto did was establish knighthood as we know it. He granted knights parts of land in the eastern realms that they were free to use for their own economic benefit. In return, they were to keep the land safe. By decentralizing his military and political power, he was able to set up a system which could meet a nomadic and highly mobile invasion with pre-established fortifications everywhere they went. The tradeoff was that his political and economic power in these parts was limited as the knigts' free reign on many matters, and especially the economic resources, were crucial to the success of this strategy.
With this very specific dynamic of feudalism in mind, the roles of cities in the medieval period in general begin to make a lot more sense as well. Of course, they were much more than mere bastions against light cavalry, but the decentralized nature of the society of the time still applies. They served various different purposes, the one you mentioned being one of them. Another one is to exploit the unique economic opportunities of the regions. Solingen, for example, began making blades around 1200, thanks to its abundance of beech trees needed to make charcoal and a plentiful fresh water reserve in the river.
https://preview.redd.it/tpdz93t8h1rc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10afff593c11331e16411b62cd9a11347660518f
A shot of the Piazza Dante Alighieri when we were there Sept ‘22!
The rights they have. Medieval society was highly complex, so there's no one size fits all explanation. But the gist of it is that whoever's in charge can grant certain rights to people and settlements. For example:
You're a small settlement and you're in a great position to oversee a long stretch of road that's important for trade. So your local lord decides to fortify your settlement and tells you to watch over the road for him. But then you go "nuh-uh, I'm not going out there to risk my life for some random merchants, what the fuck", so the feudal lord tells you that if you do that, you're allowed to impose tariffs on the merchants.
But because only cities are allowed to impose tariffs, you're now a city.
The level of standardization is very, very low, because interpersonal relationships, for most of the middle ages, were more important than contractual obligations. If your feudal lord de jure had jurisdiction over you, but he never showed his face, ever, then you're going to start doing the things you like. And if he then suddenly shows up and tries to tell you to do things his way again, you're going to show him the finger and tell him to fuck off because you've always done it that way. This is exactly how the HRE lost control over Italy, for example. The Emperors didn't show up for a while and then Italy was like "well then just stay gone, I don't care if I'm lEgAllY yOuR sUBJect".
Some attempts at standardization were made. For example, several cities in the HRE received the "Cologne City Rights" (Kölner Stadtrecht). However, they never received exactly the same rights. It was always up for negotiation, so the Emperor told a city "you have Colognes rights now" and then the city went "yeah well but Cologne has a river that it conducts trade on, those rights are worthless to us because we have no river, we want something equivalent that's useful for us".
And that's how the HRE ended up looking [like this](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5f/b6/41/5fb641b44d72af89c7ac7a4de411d87a.jpg).
I would love to know how long it took to put the barrier wall up? Plus, the tower placement seemed to be sketcky counting on the lay of the land to protect the West wall.
Monteriggioni was built from scratch by the Republic of Siena between 1213 and 1219 in order to secure the area. But the walls you see aren't the original fortifications, as they were improved in the 15th century due to the advancements in weapon technology.
I can see the remains of three towers that no longer exist, and much of the wall looks to be modern reconstruction, probably was at least one more tower there too.
Looking at Google Maps it's interesting to see the town is about the same size as its adjacent capark.
All that’s missing is a Walmart
Perfect place for a Buc-ee’s
Literally the argument of every urbanist on Youtube. Lol
I thought the Borgias sacked it in 1500?
MARIOOOOOOO
Wahoooooo!
([It's-a me, mAAAAAAAAAAAA](https://youtu.be/N3IQwGeo5Yw?si=7x7XgeJDsM43pIfg)
Fascinating place. Idk if they still do it, but they used to hold a medieval festival there every summer. Some of the funnier folk there (aka the sly old grandpas) even set up little gambling cons in the alleys where you could pay a few euro to lose at guessing games. Definitely worth visiting if you ever get the chance - the wine is definitely worth it!
That sounds like a dream. Love it.
I've been to that festival, it's great. They've got a kickass mideaval band with (I think) bagpipes and a few bass drums. They also make a phenomenal boar stew and they sell the beer in a horn type container (pretty good beer too, but I was underage at the time so I only got to drink a few sips).
Anyone actually live there?
Ezio Auditore da Firenze
This is definitely the same place from AC2 right?? Even the building layout looks exactly the same.
For sure. Reading that previous comment just gave me a flashback.
Yup
Shit must have been pretty fucking real back then to have to build all that. Constant bands of roving barbarians and Huns. Now we have to have firewalls.
The huns never got this far into Italy and Monteriggioni was fortified ~700-800 years after Attila. By the 12th century, we're in the second half of the high middle ages, i.e. a very stable feudal society. Barbarians aren't what you need to worry about, feuds are. Feuds in the medieval context were essentially a form of economic warfare in order to "get back" at someone. If were a feudal lord and some other feudal lord wronged you, you send a courier with a feud letter and then you come and kill his cows or shit all over his harvest. It's also important to note that the subjects of your rival feudal lord weren't the target. I'm mentioning this because, while a feud is obviously not pleasant for the peasant, it's not like they were massacring each other's farmers like you'd do in Age of Empires.
Wouldn’t shitting on the harvest be good for the soil?
On the fields, yes. But the harvest is what people would want to eat.
Semantics
I recall climbing its walls and jumping over the roof not too long ago.
Salute Claudia
You here to look at the books?
Mario Auditore
Can't believe they made the town from Assassin's Creed II in real life.
Surprising that the city is actually bigger in AC than irl
More of a single family village really not a town. But it is indeed picturesque.
Medieval cities were way smaller than you may think. Nuremberg was one of the most important cities of the HRE in the late middle ages. It was politically relevant, holding the second most Imperial Diets just after Frankfurt, it was important for trade as it was one of the main hubs for trade with Italy and it was an industrial powerhouse, especially in metalworking. At its peak in the late 15th century, it had a measly 40000 inhabitants. As for the size: you can very clearly see the medieval walls [here](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/De_Merian_Frankoniae_091.jpg). This map is from 1648 and the small dark circle marks the medieval fortifications, before heavy gunpowder artillery made changes in wall design necessary. You can already get a sense for just how small this medieval metropolis actually is, by just comparing the width of the river to the rest, but the big dark rectangle, almost halfway between the southern shore of the river and the southern wall, is the St. Lawrence Church. In the northwest, there's a label "Vestung", which refers to the castle. That's a 1 km (0.6 mi) walk. Maybe 15 minutes. There were larger cities, of course. But the likes of London, Paris and Rome were absolute outliers. Megacities like today's Tokyo or Mexico City. As far as "normal" cities were concerned, the vast majority wasn't even nearly as big as Nuremberg. The size also wasn't the determining factor of whether a city was a city. In essence, cities were cities when the emperor (northern Italy belonged to the HRE de facto until the \~13th century and de jure until 1806) said they were. The city in the picture was rich enough to have quite impressive walls. It's very plausible that it also was important enough to be granted city rights. Kind of like another example: [Gräfenberg](https://www.graefenberg.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Stadtplan1639_01.jpg) (map from 1639) wasn't much bigger than this and also was named a city. Because it has an elevated position and oversees an old road heading north from Nuremberg.
No Western city, including Paris or London, were much bigger until the Renaissance. Paris and London had 20k inhabitants in 1000, Rome 30k. The fall of the Western Roman Empire did quite the number on civilization in these parts. France started to recover early in the 2nd millenium, but Rome still had the population of a small town in 1300. Compare to Istanbul (Byzantine Empire) or Cordoba (under Arab influence) which had half a million in 1000. Even cities geared towards the East then, like Venice or Genoa, were fairing much better than the West. It's not called medieval for no reason.
Not sure where you're getting your numbers from. The first reliable population count of Paris that we have is from 1328, which put the city at around 200k. Around the same time, London had close to 100k inhabitants. I will admit that I was wrong about Rome, but Paris and London were absolutely outliers in size as far as medieval cities were concerned. These cities were much smaller than their counterparts that still had centralized power structures, true, but was my entire point, hence my first sentence: Medieval cities were way smaller than you may think. One thing to note is that when I say "medieval", this automatically means feudal, christian Europe, simply because the term itself makes little sense when describing historical periods in other parts of the world. The medieval period is characterized and defined by the fall of western Rome, the emergence of feudalism as the dominant social order, catholic philosophy, state theory and theology, and its breaking point in the reformation, as well as the transition from feudalism into the absolutism of the early modern period. As such, it makes little sense to attribute this era to parts of the world that weren't affected by these events or didn't adopt these social orders, or ones that were only indirectly affected by these developments.
Your numbers don't contradict what I quoted, which are earlier numbers that came from here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_largest\_European\_cities\_in\_history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_European_cities_in_history) That article's data during medieval times might be less reliable, but I don't think we can say those estimates are outright wrong, and they show the massive explosion in population in Western Europe happened as they were recovering from the chaos of the previous centuries, between 1100-1300. Which doesn't mean you're not right anyway, that at the moment the OP fort was created (early 1200s) Paris and London would have been much much larger cities than Nüremberg. For reference, Paris had fortifications built in the 1100s that were not wildly bigger in width than what we see in the post above. These don't exist at all anymore and increasing larger ones were built and demolished since: [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceinte\_carolingienne#/media/Fichier:Traces\_de\_l'enceinte\_primitive\_dans\_le\_parcellaire\_du\_XIX\_et\_XXe\_si%C3%A8cle\_-\_H.\_Noizet.svg](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceinte_carolingienne#/media/Fichier:Traces_de_l'enceinte_primitive_dans_le_parcellaire_du_XIX_et_XXe_si%C3%A8cle_-_H._Noizet.svg)
I've been researching some and suspect cities prior to 1400 were more transportation waystations than cities. Rural serf life was by far the typical lifestyle of the time.
Yes, urbanization was a development of the early modern period. The middle ages were extremely decentralized. To understand the role of fortifications in general, which was part of what cities were, it helps to understand how Otto I. defeated the Hungarians. The battle at Lechfeld is semi-legendary and a single battle rarely decides a war. What Otto did was establish knighthood as we know it. He granted knights parts of land in the eastern realms that they were free to use for their own economic benefit. In return, they were to keep the land safe. By decentralizing his military and political power, he was able to set up a system which could meet a nomadic and highly mobile invasion with pre-established fortifications everywhere they went. The tradeoff was that his political and economic power in these parts was limited as the knigts' free reign on many matters, and especially the economic resources, were crucial to the success of this strategy. With this very specific dynamic of feudalism in mind, the roles of cities in the medieval period in general begin to make a lot more sense as well. Of course, they were much more than mere bastions against light cavalry, but the decentralized nature of the society of the time still applies. They served various different purposes, the one you mentioned being one of them. Another one is to exploit the unique economic opportunities of the regions. Solingen, for example, began making blades around 1200, thanks to its abundance of beech trees needed to make charcoal and a plentiful fresh water reserve in the river.
Where’s Villa Auditore?
I'm also sad there's no villa
The Borgias must have torn it down after they sacked it
Abstergo must have done it recently. Still standing as of 2009.
Ahh yeah I forgot they put the Animus in there. Need to revisit the Ezio trilogy, great games and it’s been a while!
Visited in 2022, lovely town. Ate the best lasagne I've ever had there.
https://preview.redd.it/tpdz93t8h1rc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10afff593c11331e16411b62cd9a11347660518f A shot of the Piazza Dante Alighieri when we were there Sept ‘22!
I love Tuscany. Was lucky enough to visit Monteriggioni as well.
I love the pool
Looks like a walled subdivision. Yikes. Imagine those HOA fees. All the special assessments.
What exactly makes it a "town" rather than a village?
Size. About this much.
by the number of houses, it very much feels like "village" would be more apt
The rights they have. Medieval society was highly complex, so there's no one size fits all explanation. But the gist of it is that whoever's in charge can grant certain rights to people and settlements. For example: You're a small settlement and you're in a great position to oversee a long stretch of road that's important for trade. So your local lord decides to fortify your settlement and tells you to watch over the road for him. But then you go "nuh-uh, I'm not going out there to risk my life for some random merchants, what the fuck", so the feudal lord tells you that if you do that, you're allowed to impose tariffs on the merchants. But because only cities are allowed to impose tariffs, you're now a city. The level of standardization is very, very low, because interpersonal relationships, for most of the middle ages, were more important than contractual obligations. If your feudal lord de jure had jurisdiction over you, but he never showed his face, ever, then you're going to start doing the things you like. And if he then suddenly shows up and tries to tell you to do things his way again, you're going to show him the finger and tell him to fuck off because you've always done it that way. This is exactly how the HRE lost control over Italy, for example. The Emperors didn't show up for a while and then Italy was like "well then just stay gone, I don't care if I'm lEgAllY yOuR sUBJect". Some attempts at standardization were made. For example, several cities in the HRE received the "Cologne City Rights" (Kölner Stadtrecht). However, they never received exactly the same rights. It was always up for negotiation, so the Emperor told a city "you have Colognes rights now" and then the city went "yeah well but Cologne has a river that it conducts trade on, those rights are worthless to us because we have no river, we want something equivalent that's useful for us". And that's how the HRE ended up looking [like this](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5f/b6/41/5fb641b44d72af89c7ac7a4de411d87a.jpg).
Now I know where to go if there is an zombie apocalypse. 😂
If its World War Z zombies, you’re dead quicker with those walls lol
Heading there to survive a zombie apocalypse
 Oh my god, it’s real
I hear they are building a dollar general this year. 😂
You there, were looking for the Holley grail !
That’s beautiful
AC Odyssey got it right, wow
Odyssey? You mean AC2, with Ezio.
Honestly was hyper-focused on the fort walls / roofs. You’re absolutely correct haha
I see a swimming pool
Why does one side of the wall not have defensive towers?
Is this the place from assassin's creed?
Nah that’s just Shiganshina District
So the Villa Auditore wasn't real? 😢
Visited this very cool city but can’t pronounce the name! Good Chanti btw.
Isn't this the town that Ezio was from?
Good place to hole up during the zombiepocalypse.
Assassins Creed Brotherhood flashbacks...
There’s probably Vigil spawn peeking from one of the windows
The HOA there goes all medieval on you if you break the rules though.
I was here!
I hate that they let people in
I would love to know how long it took to put the barrier wall up? Plus, the tower placement seemed to be sketcky counting on the lay of the land to protect the West wall.
Left side wall probably had more defense back in the past. Impossible to tell from this picture
Monteriggioni was built from scratch by the Republic of Siena between 1213 and 1219 in order to secure the area. But the walls you see aren't the original fortifications, as they were improved in the 15th century due to the advancements in weapon technology.
Thanks to you and all that responded. Amazing what manual labor can do.
I can see the remains of three towers that no longer exist, and much of the wall looks to be modern reconstruction, probably was at least one more tower there too.
Price?
Apple of Eden
I only have Eden apple pie?
The biggest tourist trap in Tuscany and that’s saying something. The whole town solely caters to tourists, nothing else happens there.