Discover Montefioralle

Montefioralle is a frazione of Greve in Chianti, in the province of Florence, at a distance of 1.2 km from the comunal capoluogo. It is one of the borghi più belli d'Italia.

The village developed around its highest part, which corresponds to the ancient feudal settlement. Growing around the old castle, the borgo took an elliptical plan, made up of a radial street from which little alleys branch, all leading back to the feudal cassero.

It was known in antiquity as Monteficalle, becoming Montefioralle in the 18th century.

The borgo lay along a road called the via del Guardingo di Passignano, which put the three principal valleys of the southern part of the Florentine contado — the Val d'Elsa, the Val di Pesa and the Val di Greve — in communication with the Valdarno Superiore. That is why a hamlet of this size has a documented history at all.

Montefioralle is a textbook castle-borgo, and unusually legible because so little has been added.

The plan is elliptical because the village grew around a castle rather than along a route. A single radial street circles it, with alleys branching off, all of them leading back to the cassero.

The cassero is the earliest fabric: a rectangular block faced in filaretto of pietra alberese, of the late 12th to early 13th century, now scapezzato — cut down — and converted to housing.

The walls came a century later, late 13th to early 14th, and are of sasso scapezzato. They repeat the form of the borgo rather than imposing one, which is the tell that they were built around an existing settlement.

The three gates are cut directly into the wall — no barbicans, no gatehouses. This was a defended village, not a fortress.

The style is strikingly unitary. The buildings are medieval in structure throughout, which is why the place reads as one object rather than as a collection of periods — and why the towers absorbed into houses are hard to spot until you look for the change in masonry.

The order of construction is readable on the ground, and it runs outward from the top.

First the feudal settlement on the highest ground — the part the village then developed around.

Then the cassero, between the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century, in filaretto of pietra alberese: a dressed-stone facing laid in courses, which is a deliberate and expensive way to build a keep.

Then the houses, in an ellipse around it, served by one radial street.

Then the walls, late 13th to early 14th century, in sasso scapezzato — rougher stone than the cassero, and later. They follow the ellipse the houses had already made.

And then, slowly, the conversion. The towers became dwellings. The cassero was truncated and became a dwelling too. Nothing here was demolished so much as demoted, which is precisely why the medieval plan survives intact.

Why is it called Montefioralle? It was Monteficalle in antiquity and became Montefioralle in the 18th century. The medieval documents call it Monteficalli.

How old is it? The oldest documented record is 6 February 1085, an act drawn up "in castro Monteficalli". The cassero dates from the late 12th to early 13th century and the walls from the late 13th to early 14th.

Is the Amerigo Vespucci house genuine? A house in the borgo is said to have been his property. The record reports the tradition without documenting it, and this page does the same.

What is the Bigallo coat of arms doing here? It sits above a pointed-arch portal on one of the houses — the mark of the Florentine charitable institution on a property it held.

Why do the names in the 1122 document matter? Because Benne di Gerardo, Gisla di Guinildo and Ermengarda del fu Rolando all bear names of Germanic origin, which has led to the hypothesis that they belonged to a noble family of Lombard stock.

Is there an admission charge? No. It is an inhabited frazione with no ticket, no gate and no opening hours.

Can I drive in? You should not. The lanes are narrow and completely paved and it is 1.2 km on foot from Greve.