Like most of the towns of Tuscany, each one seemed to have their 15 minutes of fame, which they used to amass great wealth, built extravagantly costly infrastructure, invade the neighbors, fall apart in chaotic civil war, and get taken over by a neighbor. San Gimignano did not have an auspicious start, as it was controlled by the bishop of Volterra. Any town that is occupied by a bishop from another town has to be pretty weak, and when you see Volterra in the next post, you'll agree that this couldn't have been one of the top bishoprics by any stretch of the imagination. But they managed to wrest free from the bishop's altar boy army around 1100, then squandered their freedom on these crazy towers. An interesting point here is that the towers are all inside the city since they were used to kill each other. They never got around to building a city wall, so Florence swooped down on a slow day and gobbled it up.