Montefioralle site features

The shape is the point. Montefioralle is an ellipse, and once you know that, the whole village explains itself: one radial street going round, alleys dropping off it, and everything eventually returning to the cassero on the high ground.

Of that ancient cassero there survives a powerful structure on a rectangular plan, faced in filaretto of pietra alberese. It has been truncated and reduced to residential use, and should date from between the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century.

All around the settlement run the circuit walls, which repeat the form of the borgo. What survives of them shows the remains of several towers, today converted into dwellings, and the three access gates, all opened directly in the walls rather than set in gatehouses. The walls are built entirely of sasso scapezzato and date from between the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century.

The urban fabric is unusually unitary in style, characterised by buildings with medieval structures. Two stand out: a house held to have been the property of the Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci, and another with a fine pointed-arch portal carrying a Bigallo coat of arms above it.

The sacred building of the borgo is the church of Santo Stefano. Just outside, the pieve di San Cresci keeps its Romanesque structure, its facade preceded by a narthex and furnished with two bifore.

The elliptical plan

Not a grid and not a straggle along a road: an ellipse formed by building round a castle. One radial street, alleys off it, everything returning to the keep.

The cassero

A powerful rectangular structure in filaretto of pietra alberese, dating from the end of the 12th to the beginning of the 13th century — now truncated and lived in. The oldest thing here, and someone's house.

The walls and the three gates

The circuit repeats the shape of the borgo and is built of sasso scapezzato, dated late 13th to early 14th century. The three gates open directly in the wall. Walk the outside to see any of this.

The towers that became houses

The surviving stretches show the remains of several towers, today converted into dwellings — the same fate as Alba's towers, and the reason the skyline is lower than a 14th-century one would have been.

The Vespucci house

A house in the settlement is said to have been the property of Amerigo Vespucci. The record reports the tradition; it does not document the ownership, and neither does this page.

The Bigallo portal

Another house carries a pointed-arch portal with a Bigallo coat of arms above it — the Florentine charitable institution, marking a property it held.

Santo Stefano, and San Cresci below

The borgo's church is Santo Stefano. Outside the walls, the pieve di San Cresci keeps its Romanesque fabric, a narthex before the facade and two bifore.