Terra di Toscana www.terraditoscana.com

Montespertoli

Town web Hotels Farmholidays Restaurants

Inhabitants in 1991: 9.432

The municipal territory of Montespertoli extends for 125,02 square kilometres in the hilly zone between the Val di Pesa and the Val d'Elsa. Free municipality it became Podesta Office in XVI century, reaching its present day extension in 1839.

The first documents in which the place name of the capital is recorded are from XI century, but it had no significant importance until towards the XV century, above all in relation to the other localities which today make up part of its territory. The scarce surviving public documentation qualified it as a free community, in which the relatively extensive power and possessions were held by the Abbey di Passignano, the Alberti Counts and the family of minor country nobility the da Montespertoli.

There is no note of its annexation to the Fiorentino county (probably in the course of the second half of the XII century) while it is presumed that the reason for its subsequent development was perhaps the transformation of the market conceded by Firenze to San Piero in 1465, which had been traditionally held for centuries at Montespertoli, also in virtue of the fact that the village was placed along the Volterrana road, then a road of quite heavy traffic. This determined the commercial and demographic growth of the place and in the XVI century the Podesta, who until then had had Seat at San Piero in Mercato , transferred themselves to Montespertoli. Among the other localities of historic importance making up part of the municipal, Lucardo must be recalled, already important in the Longobarda and Carolingian era and coming under the jurisdiction of Firenze in 1203, and the imposing castles of Poppiano and Montegufoni belonging respectively to the families of the Guicciardini and the Acciaioli.

Places to visit:
The above mentioned castles.

Historical info reproduced upon authorization of Regione Toscana - Dipartimento della Presidenza E Affari Legislativi e Giuridici
Picture by Sandro Santioli
Translated by Ann Mountford


Terraditoscana © Polimedia - All rights reserved
Press registration n. 5528 10/11/2006 - Editor Polimedia - P.IVA 06790950486