Vertine site features

Vertine presents itself closed inside its defensive walls. Originally the circuit ran on a roughly elliptical line and was punctuated by towers, one of which — at the main gate — constituted the cassero, an arrangement similar to that of Tignano.

Where the wall is missing tells you as much as where it stands. The circuit is now absent in some stretches — behind the parish church, and near the southern gate, which stood exactly opposite the gate of the cassero. The two gates are linked by a street that still shows traces of the medieval cobbling.

The cassero is a powerful rectangular keep. Fully restored at the end of the twentieth century, it is faced in filaretto of alberese, and at each floor segmental-arched windows open in it; on the inner side is a door with sandstone jambs. Beside it stands the only surviving gate, formed of a round arch over a segmental brick arch.

The houses are the castle's contemporaries. Numerous buildings in the inhabited centre are coeval with the cassero, and they are what give the borgo its typically medieval aspect. Worth picking out is the large building in the southern part, carefully faced in filaretto of alberese, which by its sheer scale may have been the residence of the lords of the place.

The church is older than it looks. San Bartolomeo goes back, like the castle, to the eleventh century; it was originally smaller and set perpendicular to the present building. Its neo-Romanesque facade dates from the 1930s. Inside it preserves fragments of fifteenth-century frescoes of the Florentine school: a Pietà, Vertine dalle sette torri, Saints Sebastian and Roch, and the Angel and the Virgin Annunciate.

A portrait of the village with seven towers

The single most interesting thing in Vertine, and it is a painting. Among the fifteenth-century Florentine-school fresco fragments in San Bartolomeo is one the record names Vertine dalle sette torri. The circuit was originally punctuated by towers; one, the cassero, survives.

Two gates and the street between them

The borgo's plan in one walk. The main gate stood beside the cassero; the southern gate stood exactly opposite. The street linking them still carries traces of the medieval acciottolato, and it is the only through-route there is.

The cassero, restored and legible

A powerful rectangular keep faced in filaretto of alberese, fully restored at the end of the twentieth century, with segmental-arched windows at every floor and, on the inner face, a door with sandstone jambs. Next to it the surviving gate: a round arch set over a segmental arch in brick.

An alberese palace hiding in a hamlet

In the southern part of the village stands a large building with careful filaretto facing in alberese, imposing enough that the record suggests it was the lords' residence. In a place of 22 people it is easy to walk past.

Two paintings that left

From this church come two works of considerable quality now deposited in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena: the Madonna dei Raccomandati, an early work by Simone Martini, and a triptych by Bicci di Lorenzo of 1430 showing the Madonna and Child with Saints Bartholomew, John the Evangelist, Magdalene and Anthony Abbot. Both are in Siena, not here.

A castle twice in rebellion

In 1312 and again in 1351 members of the Ricasoli committed acts of rebellion against the Florentine authorities and against those of their own family who stayed loyal to Florence — acts which appear to have been carried out with Sienese assistance. Between 1452 and 1478 the same family made Vertine their principal residence while holding the office of Commissioners of the Republic of Florence for the Chianti.