Monteriggioni
Interesting facts
- The walls originally carried fifteen towers; four were later cut down to wall height, and eleven still rise about 6.5 metres above the ramparts.
- Many of today's tower tops are not medieval: they were rebuilt in the 1920s so the silhouette Dante described could again be seen from the Via Cassia.
- Dante's line "Monteriggioni di torri si corona" in Inferno Canto XXXI gave its name to the village's annual medieval festival held each July.
- Siena bought the hilltop from the Da Staggia family, and work began under the podestà Guelfo da Porcari around 1214.
- Defenders could set fire to charcoal-filled ditches called carbonaie around the walls, creating a ring of flame against attackers.
- In 1254 a Florentine siege nearly succeeded after the German garrison, hearing of King Conrad IV's death, was bribed to give up.
- In 1526 the castle held out against a Florentine force of some 2,000 infantry and 500 cavalry.
- During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the walls were partly buried behind earth banks so they could better withstand cannon fire.
- Monteriggioni appears in the video games Assassin's Creed II and Brotherhood where it serves as the family home of the hero Ezio Auditore.
Why it is worth it
Seen from the road below, Monteriggioni is a crown of stone set on a low hill: an almost unbroken ring of medieval wall, studded with square towers, enclosing a small village. So striking was this silhouette that Dante used it in the Inferno, comparing the giants who stand around the pit at the bottom of Hell to the towers that ring Monteriggioni.
The castle was founded by the Republic of Siena, which began building it in 1214 on a hill of the Montagnola Senese, about 274 metres above sea level. It was a frontier fortress, raised to guard the routes through the Elsa and Staggia valleys against Florence, Siena's great rival. The walls, about 570 metres around and some two metres thick, follow the curve of the hilltop in a roughly circular plan and are punctuated at intervals by square towers. Two gates open in the circuit: the Porta Fiorentina, facing north towards Florence, and the Porta Romana, facing south towards Rome, joined by the main street that crosses the village. At its heart lies the Piazza Dante Alighieri with the church of Santa Maria Assunta.
Its end as a Sienese stronghold came on 27 April 1554, during the war between Siena and the Medici of Florence, when its captain, Giovannino Zeti, a former Florentine exile, handed it over to the Florentine forces under the Marquis of Marignano. Historians have seen the surrender as one of the events that closed the age of the independent Italian city-states.
Monteriggioni today is also a stage on the Via Francigena, the old pilgrim road to Rome; from the village the route runs about 20 km to the Piazza del Campo in Siena.
Getting there
Monteriggioni lies in the province of Siena, about 9.5 km in a straight line from the town of Colle di Val d'Elsa and about 20 km on foot from the centre of Siena. The nearest airport is Florence Peretola (FLR), about 49 km away in a straight line.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Siena Cathedral 10.5 km · cathedral
- Piazza del Campo 10.7 km · square
- Torre del Mangia 10.7 km · bell-tower
- San Gimignano 18.0 km · beautiful-village
- Abbey of San Galgano 24.7 km · ruins
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Monteriggioni is a comune in the province of Siena in the Italian region of Tuscany. The town is architecturally and culturally significant. It hosts several piazzas, and is referenced in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Monteriggioni borders the municipalities of Casole d'Elsa, Castellina in Chianti, Castelnuovo Berardenga, Colle di Val d'Elsa, Poggibonsi, Siena, and Sovicille.
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