Monteriggioni, the Town of Towering Giants

The small Tuscan town of Monteriggioni is best known for being the hometown of the noble Auditore family in the video game Assassin’s Creed. However, the town actually entered the popular imagination hundreds of years earlier, being mentioned by the poet Dante in his great epic the Divine Comedy, when he compares it to a ring of “terrifying giants” in the deepest circle of Hell. As it turns out, those “giants” are actually the town’s medieval towers! And today, the town’s charming streets, cozy piazzas, and lovely little museums make it much more apt to be compared not to Hell but to that other, happier place.