Discover Vertine

Last updated on October 16, 2026

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Checked against Wikipedia — Vertine presents itself enclosed within its defensive walls; originally the wall circuit developed on a roughly elliptical line and was punctuated by towers, one of which, at the principal gate, constituted the Cassero, a solution similar to that of Tignano. Today the circuit is missing in some stretches, as behind the parish church and near the southern gate, which stood exactly opposite that of the cassero, and the two gates are linked by a street that still shows traces of the medieval cobbling., The cassero of Vertine, restored integrally at the end of the twentieth century, consists of a powerful keep on a rectangular plan faced in filaretto of alberese, in which windows with segmental arches open at each floor, while on the inner side there is a door with sandstone jambs; beside the cassero is the only surviving access gate, formed of a round arch surmounting a segmental arch in brick. In the inhabited area of Vertine there are numerous buildings coeval with the cassero which give the borgo a typically medieval aspect, and worth noting is the large building in the southern part which presents a careful facing in filaretto of alberese and which, for its imposing scale, may have been the residence of the lords of the place., The church of San Bartolomeo at Vertine dates like the castle to the eleventh century, was originally smaller and disposed perpendicularly with respect to the present building, and preserves some fragments of fifteenth-century frescoes of the Florentine school -- a Pieta, Vertine dalle sette torri, Saints Sebastian and Roch, and the Angel and the Virgin Annunciate. It was a suffragan first of the pieve of San Pietro in Avenano and then of the pieve of Spaltenna, and its neo-Romanesque facade dates from the 1930s. From this church come two works of notable quality deposited at the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena: the Madonna dei Raccomandati, an early work by Simone Martini, and the triptych by Bicci di Lorenzo depicting the Madonna and Child with Saints Bartholomew, John the Evangelist, Magdalene and Anthony Abbot, of 1430. (October 2026).

Discover Vertine

Architecture

The short history

How it was built and evolved over time

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Discover Vertine

Architecture

The short history

How it was built and evolved over time

Frequently asked questions

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