On the day after Christmas we were traveling in a van with our friends, Nancy, John, and their two daughters, from Rome to Florence, by way of San Gimignano. I had visited the famous city of towers years earlier with a friend and had enjoyed it so much that I put it on our itinerary for a quick visit.
Because of the town's history of invasions in the middle ages, its residents, in the interest of protection, built tower fortresses around their homes. These towers became a symbol of a family's wealth which was ostentatiously displayed by the height of its tower. Today fourteen of the original 72 towers remain, giving the town a dramatic silhouette visible from miles around. San Gimignano is a charming and unique town to visit, and well worth adding an extra half-day to your itinerary, but I would be lying if I said that it had been the allure of the towers that motivated my return.
The Museum of Torture and The Museum of the Death Penalty are the true reason I had to go back to San Gimignano and I had piqued the interest of my husband and sons by telling them about my experience there. ( "Experience" is a more accurate description than "visit." You visit the Louvre. This place will leave a permanent impression on your psyche.) The collections are comprised of authentic instruments, contraptions, and machines used from the Middle Ages up until the 20th century to coerce citizens into compliance or punish them for their transgressions. (Some barbaric place called Alabama used a wooden seat hooked up to a power source to punish their criminals, so if you've never seen an electric chair stateside, you can enjoy one here.) Interestingly, yet not surprisingly, most of these methods were applied by members of the clergy to enforce Christianity on heathens or to punish bad Christians for veering off-road. Remember the Inquisition from your World History class?
How many different kinds of instruments of torture can there be, you may ask? As many as they needed to get the point across, I suppose. You're already familiar with a few: The Iron Maiden, The Rack, The Garotte; but if you were to think outside the box like some of these evil little monks, (no, don't!) you still wouldn't come up with The Pear, The Claw, or The Spike Chair. I will leave it to you to research these further, if you dare, but suffice it to say that they really knew how to hurt a guy, or gal, and a slow, days-long, tortuous death was the objective.
So what did I find so delightful about this place, and how did my family and friends enjoy their "experience?" To be truthful, the vote was split, but no matter how frightening or diabolical these exhibits are, most people are fascinated by the macabre and while we moved through the museums we invented a game of guessing how each instrument had been used. It gets easier, actually, and a simple iron spike looked pretty obviously like the disemboweler that it was, but Nancy felt the need to stick her finger over the point before reading the descriptive sign. ("Do you know where that's been, Nancy?")
By the time we had finished with the two museums we were tired and cold, and a quick stop at a coffee bar for a hot chocolate seemed simple enough. But we did not sit down!, except maybe Nancy to rest for a quick second, and to have treated us like naive tourists when there was a scrappy Roman in the group was very short-sighted on the part of the owner. Call it her lucky day, or her smart move at refunding our money, but the police were never called and we made it to Florence that night no worse for the wear. It's been a few years and we're all on speaking terms again, but I won't apologize for providing everyone with a good cocktail party story; inappropriate as it may be to tell, it's a great ice-breaker.
Museum of Torture
