day trip from Siena to San Gimignano

We were staying on an agriturisimo about 4 miles outside of San Gimignano, and we drove over there one afternoon.

It's just a small place and not worthy of more than an hour or two. The trick is to visit early or late as mid days the tour buses load people in the city.

I actually enjoyed Volterra better--18 miles beyond San Gimignano.

Hello Rozan,

You can use Rome2Rio.com to start looking but the "always double check what they tell you" goes triply for bus schedules.
Another good source of information for a touristy town like SG is just Google "Getting to ..." and someone on the tourism board may have set up a web page explaining the local options.
https://www.discovertuscany.com/san-gimignano/how-to-reach-san-gimignano.html

This will take 43 + 25 minutes according to the the Tuscan bus planner: https://www.at-bus.it/it/linee-e-orari/travel-planner
It looks like you can take bus Bus Regionali 131 Per 131-POGGIBONSI FS and then walk to the other bus stop in Poggibonsi and take Bus Siena extraurbano 130 Per 130-PORTA SAN GIOVANNI.

The central hub town is the unfortunate Poggibonsi and most travel between these towns goes through there.

I find bus planning confusing via the many on-line sites. Moovit https://moovitapp.com/index/en/ is sometimes helpful but often times you'll need to get information from multiple sources. It looks like MoovIt will get you to Poggibonsi but doesn't tell you about the 130 bus that gets you to SG.

I would agree on SG being worth a couple of hours. Volterra by bus will probably be a similar story about changing somewhere.

Bus 138 goes from Siena to Arezzo which might be an interesting day trip unfortunately it's not fast.
https://moovitapp.com/index/en/public_transit-line-138-Firenze-2022-2953373-77966181-0
I plan to use it to move between Arezzo and Siena but it seems long for a day trip.

Hope this helps, you can also just have a couple of places in mind and then ask the locals which bus to take when you get there and decide on your options.

Have a great trip, it's beautiful there,
=Tod

Thank you Tod for your info on buses. After looking into the options, I'm thinking of going to Montepulciano instead. It's a 1 hour train trip from the Siena train station. I know that I have to go down to the station either by bus or by walking, but that's fine with me.

SG you take the 28 minute [or less] train ride to Poggibonsi-S. Gimignano and a bus. Montepulciano has no station; one hour train ride to Chiusi and a taxi.

Thank you, N-Kingdom, Initially, I saw this on the Trenitalia site:
R19075 Siena-12:15 pm to Montepulciano 1:18 pm
and this on the Trainline site: "Montepulciano is on a minor rail line and the small train station is a few kilometers outside of town. Buses connect the train station with the town." But I am reading that the bus service is infrequent and a "few" kilometers is actually 15.

You can take a short train ride Siena to Poggibonsi, then catch a bus to San Gimignano.
The bus stop for SG is just up a slight hill in an open area in front of the Poggibonsi train station.
There are a couple of bus stops , so a small “hub” for buses.
You can’t miss it.
You’d have to look up the bus schedules.

https://www.sitabus.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Siena_SanGimignano_AR.pdf

It looks like you can get a bus from Siena….??may have to change in P.?

Thank you SJ. Yes, at some times, the bus is direct. At other times, I have to change in P. Just saw someone on Youtube making the trip with the connection you describe.

Bus 130 departs from Siena Via Tozzi (main bus stop near center of town) to San Gimignano. The schedule is on the website at-bus.it. Under "lines and timetable" type in 130. It gives you departure and return schedule.

The Piazzale Montemaggio stop is right outside the gate into San Gimignano.

Thank you EVERYONE for all your help!