Photos of Rocca San Silvestro
About Rocca San Silvestro
Rocca San Silvestro is a ruined medieval village sitting all alone on a hilltop in the San Silvestro Archaeological Mines Park. It was a mining town. The people started living here around the 11th century. They dug copper and silver bearing lead out of the hills around them, smelted it on site, and sent the metal off to the mints at Lucca and Pisa. After a few centuries, sometime in the 1300s, everyone just left and no one ever built or lived here again. Archaeologists excavated the whole site in the 1980s, so what you walk through is the complete layout of a working medieval village. You can see where there were once houses, a church, workshops and even a castle tower on the highest point. The walls that remain today are warm grey stone and most of them only range from waist to head height. Oak and Mediterranean scrub have reclaimed the space around them with a beautiful view out to the sea in the distance. The trail below gives you the perfect spot to start photographing the site with the ruins stacked up the hillside and the tower above. Once you start exploring the grounds the walls, doorways and window openings make natural frames for the hills beyond. Late afternoon light pairs perfectly with the grey stone and often the sunset colours are amazing up here. Getting up there means either walking up the marked trail from the park entrance past the old mine workings, or taking the little mine train through the tunnel with a short walk at the end. Since the village sits within the Archaeological park it is only accessible during the park's hours so make sure to check their schedule before heading out. (Campiglia Marittima, Tuscany, Italy)
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