Discover Vertine

Vertine is a frazione of the comune of Gaiole in Chianti, in the province of Siena, with 22 inhabitants at the 2011 census. Its patron is San Bartolomeo.

The castle is first named in 1013, in a private document. In an act of 1049 a certain Pietro di Pietro donated to the monastery of Coltibuono Integram suam portionem de castello e curte de Vertine — his entire share of the castle and court of Vertine — and from the same document it appears that the place was the seat of a court comprising twelve mansi.

The Ricasoli appear in 1202 and stay. Eleventh- and twelfth-century documents record the castle in the hands of several families; only in 1202 is there a first indication of the presence of the Ricasoli, who then owned it into the modern era.

Today it is a fortified borgo visited by a notable number of tourists, drawn by the remarkable preservation of its inhabited centre and by its position in the territory of Chianti Classico.

The type is a walled village with a keep at its gate. The original circuit was roughly elliptical and was scandito — punctuated — by towers; the one at the principal gate constituted the cassero. The record compares the arrangement to Tignano, in the Val d'Elsa.

The circuit is now broken in two identifiable places: behind the parish church and near the southern gate. Those gaps are where the village grew through its own wall.

The two gates were set opposite each other, and the street that joins them — still showing medieval cobbling — is therefore the original axis of the settlement, not a later convenience.

The cassero is a rectangular torrione in alberese ashlar. Faced in filaretto di alberese, it opens segmental-arched windows at each floor and carries, on its inner side, a door with sandstone jambs — arenaria for the dressed opening, alberese for the wall, which is the standard Chianti pairing. It was restored integrally at the end of the twentieth century.

The surviving gate is two arches, one over the other. A round arch surmounting a segmental arch in brick — the brick being the later repair.

The domestic fabric is coeval with the keep, and one building in the southern part is faced with enough care, in alberese filaretto, to suggest a seigneurial residence rather than a farmhouse.

The church's present face is modern. The neo-Romanesque facade is of the 1930s; the eleventh-century church beneath it was smaller and lay perpendicular to the present axis.

Everything structural here is alberese, laid in filaretto. That is the grey-white limestone of the Chianti hills, split and squared into regular courses. The cassero, and the best of the houses, are built that way; the quality of the coursing is what distinguishes a lord's building from a farm.

Dressed openings are sandstone. The cassero's inner door has stipiti in arenaria — sandstone jambs — because arenaria cuts and carves where alberese does not. The division of labour between the two stones is visible on almost every medieval building in the comune.

The windows date the restoration as much as the keep. Segmental-arched openings at every floor are a domestic form, not a defensive one; the cassero was restored integrally at the end of the twentieth century, and what you see is that campaign's reading of the building.

The gate was patched in brick. A round arch over a segmental brick arch: brick is the repair material, cheap and quick, and its presence under a stone arch is a record of the opening being rebuilt lower or narrower at some point.

The street surface is the oldest surviving fabric you can touch. Stretches of medieval acciottolato — river cobbles set on edge — survive between the two gates, which is rarer than surviving walls.

And the wall was built to be built out of. Where the circuit is gone, behind the church and by the southern gate, the stone did not vanish; it went into whatever stands there now.

Can I go inside the castle?

Nothing read says so. The cassero was restored at the end of the twentieth century and is private; no opening hours, admission or tour are published anywhere, and the site the encyclopaedia lists for it is dead. The village street and the gate are free to walk.

Did Vertine really have seven towers?

A fifteenth-century fresco fragment in the church is titled Vertine dalle sette torri and shows the village that way. The record says the wall circuit was punctuated by towers but does not give a number; today the cassero is the one that stands.

How old is the village?

The castle is first mentioned in a private document of 1013, and an act of 1049 donating a share of it to Coltibuono shows a court of twelve mansi. The church dates, like the castle, to the eleventh century.

How many people live there?

22, at the 2011 census. Vertine is one of the sixteen frazioni of the comune of Gaiole in Chianti and stands at 505 m.

Is the church open?

No hours are published. Inside are fragments of fifteenth-century Florentine-school frescoes — a Pietà, Vertine dalle sette torri, Saints Sebastian and Roch and an Annunciation. Its facade is a 1930s neo-Romanesque rebuilding.

Are there famous paintings here?

Not any more. Two works from this church are in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena: the Madonna dei Raccomandati, an early Simone Martini, and a 1430 triptych by Bicci di Lorenzo.

Why does it look so intact?

Because it stopped mattering. The Ricasoli held it from 1202 into the modern era and the last fortification work was in the sixteenth century; there was never the money or the reason to rebuild, which is why the houses are still the keep's contemporaries.