How Gaiole in Chianti was built and evolved over time

The building story of this comune is castles, and they are legible by material. At Brolio the various epochs are easily distinguished by the different use of the old building material, pietra serena, and of brick: only the base of the cassero, from the first years of the millennium, is recognisable as original, while the well-preserved walls are typical of medieval-Renaissance architecture.

The nineteenth century added an English manor in brick. In 1835 Bettino Ricasoli commissioned the architect Pietro Marchetti to modify Brolio to the taste of the Gothic Revival, the romantic movement originating in England: the ancient fortress became an English manor, using brick as the principal material, opening Tudor-style windows and inserting crenellated turrets foreign to local architecture.

At Meleto the military layout survived the conversion. An irregular quadrilateral with the cassero tower at its centre; great works were carried out after 1480, when the two powerful cylindrical bastioned towers were built at the southern margins, the most exposed in a siege, along with the brick galleries still provided with corbels at the northern corners.

At Vertine the cassero is a textbook. A powerful rectangular tower faced in alberese filaretto, with flattened-arch windows at each floor and, on the inner side, a door with sandstone jambs; beside it the one surviving gate, a round arch over a flattened brick arch. The circuit was originally roughly elliptical, punctuated by towers, one of which — at the main gate — formed the cassero.

At Coltibuono the church reads in two materials. The nave's wall facing is of river pebbles of modest workmanship, while in the transept, the apse and the bell tower the facing is alberese filaretto. The nave's covering is an eighteenth-century false vault decorated with late-Baroque frescoes and stuccoes; the transept's barrel vaults are original.

And the parish church in town is a modern building in old stone. San Sigismondo is a neo-Gothic construction covered in pietra serena, except for the facade.