Casa Chianti Classico, Radda in Chianti historical timeline

It starts with a picture people walked to see. The toponym Santa Maria has ancient origins: the sacred building here is remembered from the beginning of the 9th century as a destination of pilgrimage, in veneration of an image of the Virgin held to be miraculous.

Then it became a dependency. It was subsequently placed under the church of San Niccolò at Radda as a Marian oratory — which is why the Neri di Bicci altarpiece painted for it in 1474 puts Saint Nicholas at the Virgin's side.

In the seventeenth century it was attached to the parish, and in 1708 it was given away. The oratory of Santa Maria del Prato was united to the propositura di San Niccolò, and that union lasted until 1708, when the oratory was ceded to the Franciscan friars so that they might establish a convent there.

The building you see is what the friars made. The convent dates to the Settecento, when the existing Romanesque oratory was entrusted to a community of religious who restructured it, built the structure adjacent to the present church, and created the portico in front of it.

Its modern life is a wine institution. The restored rooms now hold the Casa Chianti Classico, run by Convivium Srl — a bistrot, an enoteca, a sensory and informative route on wine and on the history of Chianti Classico, exhibition and event spaces, and courses. The subject it interprets has its own long history: the delimitation of the Chianti wine zone has run for three hundred years, from Cosimo de' Medici's edict of 1716.

• Wikipedia