I've never showed you the tiny town in which we stayed. The village of
Belforte belongs to the municipality of
Radicondoli, in the province of
Siena, region
Toscana. It is small. It has a ristorante, post office and a small shop. There is a church.
There is, however more to it than that. Belforte has a long history. It is the ancestral home of the powerful Belforti family of
Volterra. The castle is first mentioned during the 12 C and in a document of 1208 it is cited in the will of Ildebrando Aldobrandesco where he bequeaths it to his son Ildebrandino together with other territory and castles. In 1221, Belforte numbered 260 heads of the family and, together with Radicondoli, swore fealty to the Republic of
Sienna. Despite this, Sienna and the Aldobrandeschi continued to contend for possession of Belforte, but in 1301 it became definitively the property of Sienna. From then on, Belforte shared the destiny of Radicondoli and in 1555 it was incorporated into the
Grand Duchy of the Medici . In 1676, the auditor Gherardini notes that Belforte had a main street paved partly in brick and partly in stone, running from one town gate to the other. Among the public buildings were the Palace of Justice, a reservoir, a fountain including a public washhouse and an animal trough, a kiln, the schoolmaster's house, a pilgrims' hospice, the parish church and the Church of Santa Croce.
So this is Belforte as we saw it:
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| The Main Street: Via Santa Croce |
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| Ristorante La Mura |
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| A 'side street' leading from the Main Street to Villa Belforte |
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| The southern end of Via Santa Croce |
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| Villa Belforte |
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| Just to show that The Nighthawk really was there |
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| Via Santa Croce looking northwards by day |
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| It's hard to tell which walls belong to which house much of the time. |
Tremendous night shots. My sort of place....not many folk about.
ReplyDeleteThe only time we saw many people was of a lunchtime when a group of men would sit down one side of the main street with their lunch and the women would be gathered around chatting: very sociable. It was a grand wee - very wee - town.
DeleteLove the "side street" shot! I had to look up fealty, that's a word I had not come across before.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a word one uses very often Meike!
DeleteWhat a quaint little town...love the "away from the maddening crowd" atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteWe never doubted for one minute that the NightHawk was there.
Lovely photos as usual...loved the lights strung between the buildings.
It was certainly away from the crowds Virginia. Everything seems to get strung between or from buildings because there is little other room in the streets of the town. Around the edges where Villa Belforte where we stayed was there, unless they were holiday houses, there were gardens almost entirely cultivated for food.
DeleteIt's beautiful, GB. It looks like a movie set...
ReplyDeleteIt could well have been a movie set Carol. It really was that picturesque but then so many places in Tuscany are like that.
DeleteOne can almost feel the history built into those walls, can't one? Thanks for the tour!
ReplyDeleteYes, Monica, there's history a-plenty all around.
DeleteI love the night shots GB. It looks like a very peaceful place.
ReplyDeleteHi Ruby. Good to hear from you. It is a very peaceful place. I could happily spend a lot of time there.
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