Museo della Tortura

San Gim has much to offer travelers like Vernaccia di San Gimignano (a famous white wine), Cinghiale (wild boar salami) and breathtaking views from one of its fourteen towers. Just admire how M.C. Escher saw the city –
It also has a dark and sordid history as a hub for prosecuting and punishing those deemed heretics by the Roman Inquisition. Some of the common charges included practicing homosexuality, promiscuity, Protestantism and Judaism. The museum that houses the tools of the torment trade was an optional excursion during my tour but I’d have rather died than miss it. Here are some of the grisly gadgets I saw –
Guillotine. A true classic I’ve actually considered installing a small one in my kitchen, because I want to start the deliberate and systematic destruction of a particular group of plants… lettuce. When compared to arugula or radichetta, it’s an inferior race of leafy green vegetable. Just thinking about it makes me want to hum my assassin’s anthem, Heads Will Roll by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Iron Maiden. An 80’s hair metal band or a torture device meant to look like a sculpture. You can host a dinner party and no one would know you’re also doing your sacred duty of punishing the wicked. Don’t worry the victim’s screams won’t spoil the meal, it’s completely soundproof. Once the guests have left you can open one side and have a peek at the damage the steel-​spiked interior has done. Unfortunately by then the accused may have passed out due to the intense claustrophobia the maiden of Nuremberg was designed to induce.
Judas Cradle. Get busted for crimes against the church and you’ll get placed on a wooden triangular apparatus named for Jesus’ betrayer. If you were lucky on your chest or back, if your jailer was having a particularly bad day… you’d be forced to sit on it while the Judas Priests strapped heavy weights to your ankles and left gravity do their dirty work.
Pear of Anguish. A spreading caliper of pain that opens in four directions with a locking mechanism to hold it in place in the prisoner’s mouth, vagina or rectum. It was often used in this fashion –
Inquisitor, «What do you say we take a break from all this thumb-​screw business I’m famished. Would you like a pear?»
Alleged Blasphemer, «Oh yes. I’m so nauseous and in terrible pain, mercy… please!»
Inquisitor, «OK but since you’re in cuffs I have to feed it to you, open real wide.»
Obviously someone didn’t know the unwritten rule, never accept anything from an executioner, they’re known to have notoriously cruel senses of humor.
The detainees at Gitmo don’t know how good they’ve got it; I’ll take barking German Shepherds and waterboarding any day over the tamest device of displeasure they keep in this joint. Admission is € 12÷7÷5 for adults, children, and groups respectively which is double or triple the price of most institutions in Italy, but I doubt this museum has much philanthropy. You can’t really have a press conference with a giant cardboard check that says «Torture Museum» on it when they’re a so many kids with leukemia in the world.
At the time I was ready to poke my own eyes out if a saw another damn fresco or architectural marvel and it was a welcome off the beaten path distraction. I recommend it and so does the Wu-​Tang Clan. They stopped at St. Gimmy’s Museo della Tortura during the first leg of their European tour, which inspired this skit –