To get to the «Land of the Wigeons» you have to go up a hill, pass a little church, turn left, bear slightly left again and there’s the restaurant. It has a marvellously panoramic and truly enviable position. Inside we are welcomed by Maria Pia and Marcello, a couple who share both their work and their lives, she’s from Milan and he’s from Lecce. Together they had the idea of transforming a tavern into a modern, clean and welcoming restaurant, where Maria Pia’s cuisine blends perfectly with the artistic decor and the surrounding landscape.
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Torrita, once called “Turrita”, is first mentioned in a document dated 1037 where it is listed as the property of the Benedictine Abbey of Sant’Antimo near Montalcino. As a fortified town with a surrounding wall and four towers, it later served as a military outpost for the defense of Siena’s border with neighboring Montepulciano. Later still, the town held Florentine ambitions at bay until it finally fell to the imperial forces of Charles the First in 1554 and the entire area passed into the Florentine Grand duchy.
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Amongst the great variety of temporal and spiritual potentates that dot the history of Italy, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III passed through here (remembered by the Edict of Fonterutoli of 998 which put an end to the territorial conflicts of the dioceses of Siena, Arezzo and Fiesole), then Pope Leo X who left Rome and stopped in Castellina to meet the freshly nominated King of France in 1515; here came the Guelph troops who came down from Florence for the Battle of Montaperti (4 September 1260) and were soundly defeated; an earthquake for the European geopolitical scenario in favour of the Empire and the Republic of Siena. We also remember how Filippo Brunelleschi passed here to remodel the fortresses of Castellina, Staggia and Rencine. We also recall, for various reasons, various famous personalities who were here for work or residence, such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Jacopo della Quercia, Lisa Gherardini and Michelangelo Buonarroti.
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DI SIMONE BANDINI In order for a real, physical place to maintain its symbolic relevance alongside its architectural shape, its space must be open – with precise exchanges between material and transcendental reality. I realize intuitively and suddenly that here – at the Rocca di Staggia – I am in one of these places. Donatella […]
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DI JORI DIEGO CHERUBINI “Tradition is not the cult of the ashes but the custody of the fire” is an admirable phrase of Gustav Mahler, and the more time passes the more it finds meaning and resonance. And the fire in Abbadia San Salvatore has been guarded for millennia during the Fiaccole [Torches]. A festival […]
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The Poggio Amorelli farm and the Mazzarrini family at the property of Poggio ai Laghi, near Lake Sant’Antonio in Monteriggioni.
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Villa Solissimo is a beautiful place at the entry of the old village of Lucignano, in the municipality of Gaiole in Chianti, Siena.
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