Castellina in Chianti discovery guide

Because this is the frontier itself — the fortress Florence built to watch Siena, with Etruscan princes buried under the hill it stands on.

Castellina was the forward outpost, on the most direct road between the two rival cities. The Florentines rebuilt it from 1401, and the cassero still holds the main square. Half a kilometre out, the tumulo di Montecalvario is fifty metres across with four tomb chambers set to the points of the compass.

The friction is that the town itself is modest. Its own encyclopaedia calls the historic centre's architecture abbastanza modesti — fairly modest — and it was restored wholesale on the Chianti Classico boom. Arrive expecting a San Gimignano and you will be disappointed within twenty minutes.

The smart way is to start inside the Rocca. The museum there explains the whole landscape — tombs, hill settlements, wine and oil — and its stair reaches the top of the tower. Then the Via delle Volte, then the tumulus by car. In that order the town makes sense; in any other it is a wine stop with a view.

May, June, September and early October are the months this town is built for. At 578 metres the air moves, and the ridge roads are a pleasure rather than an ordeal.

July and August are hot and busy. The nearest long-run weather station, Poggibonsi-Strozzavolpe, averages a July maximum of 30.9 °C and an August maximum of 30.6 °C over thirty years. The museum is open daily from April to October and the town's concert series falls in July.

Harvest turns the comune into a workplace. From late August into October the vineyard roads carry tractors and trailers; this is the most beautiful time to be here and the worst time to be in a hurry.

Winter is cold, quiet and genuinely upland. January averages 10.2 °C by day and 0.7 °C by night at the same station, and Castellina sits a good deal higher. Check that anything you intend to visit is open before you drive.

Begin in the Rocca, not on the square

The Museo Archeologico del Chianti occupies the fortress, and its route runs through the fifteenth-century rooms to the middle wall-walk and the top of the tower. From there the view reaches the Valdelsa and San Gimignano, the Monti del Chianti and the Pratomagno, and the Amiata and Cetona. An hour here tells you what every ridge you will drive across actually is.

Walk the Via delle Volte slowly

It is not a picturesque alley: it is the sunken wall-walk of the fifteenth-century fortifications, the best-preserved stretch of a circuit that is otherwise nearly gone. Walk it in both directions — the arches frame the valley on one side and the town wall on the other.

Drive out to the tumulus

The tumulo di Montecalvario is a short distance along the Chiantigiana, the SR 222. Four tombs set to the cardinal points inside a mound over fifty metres in diameter, raised for the lords who held this ground at the end of the 7th century BC. Go after the museum, where the parade chariot found in it has been reconstructed.

Then Fonterutoli, for the story the whole region tells about itself

A few minutes south on the Chiantigiana, with Siena visible from it. This is where the tale of the two knights racing at cockcrow places the boundary — the legend behind the black cockerel.

Castellina is a border town that stopped being one, and never quite changed the subject. Everything it shows a visitor — the fortress, the vanished gates named Fiorentina and Senese, the sunken wall-walk — is about a frontier that was abolished in the fifteenth century.

Its emblem is a cockerel on a half-ruined tower. The arms, recognised by decree on 17 October 1932, show a church flanked by a tower with a cock above it: the badge of the Lega del Chianti, the military and administrative league divided into the terzieri of Castellina, Gaiole and Radda, and a reminder of the truce between Florence and Siena that the town witnessed.

The wine identity is modern and total. The historic centre was restored in recent decades on the strength of the Chianti Classico boom, and the comune lies wholly inside the denomination. The town's own summer concert series pairs music in the Rocca with the wines of Castellina producers.

There is also a harder twentieth-century memory. Between 1934 and 1939 an agricultural colony at Ricavo trained some two hundred young Jewish refugees from Germany and eastern Europe in farming before emigration to Palestine; the racial laws ended it.

This is a working wine comune, not a theme park. Castellina's 99.45 square kilometres lie entirely inside Chianti Classico, and the vineyards you drive between are somebody's crop. Stay on the roads and marked paths, and do not walk into a vineyard for a photograph.

The Etruscan sites are unguarded and fragile. The tumulo di Montecalvario and the necropoli del Poggino are open structures of alberese and travertine, already looted in antiquity and repaired with distinguishable stone so the restoration can be told from the original. Do not climb on the dromos walls or move stones.

The cypress wood is a monument too. The Riserva naturale del Bosco di Sant'Agnese, 271 hectares established in 1996 and managed by the Province of Siena, protects a cypress stand that has regenerated spontaneously for about ten centuries. It is a protected area, and it burns.

Spend inside the comune. The museum is run for the comune and its ticket money stays here; the wine poured at its summer concerts comes from Castellina estates. A visitor who buys lunch and a bottle in the town does more for it than one who photographs the Rocca and drives on to Siena.

Castellina is a small comune with one ticketed attraction, and the rest of the day is what you choose to spend.

The museum is the one fixed price. The Museo Archeologico del Chianti charges €9.00 full and €6.50 reduced — the reduction covering ages 7–18, university students, holders of vouchers issued to guests staying in accommodation in the comune, and FMS Card holders. Groups of fifteen or more pay €5.00 a head. Entry is free for children 0–6, visitors with certified disability, official tourist guides, ICOM cardholders, MiC staff, group and school leaders, pupils of Castellina's schools and residents of the comune.

Nothing else in the town has a gate. The Via delle Volte is a public street. The museum publishes prices for itself and for nothing else in the comune: the tumulo di Montecalvario and the necropoli del Poggino have no gate and no published admission.

The real cost here is transport and wine. With no station in the town and buses that serve residents first, most visitors arrive by car; and in a town the Fondazione Musei Senesi places nel cuore del Chianti, a tasting is the easiest money to spend without noticing.