Welcome back! We are in the middle of Dante's year and so we decided to dig into our accessible tourism experiences by recovering our visit to Santa Fiora, a village in the province of Grosseto that we discovered in August 2014 and which, like many Tuscan villages, is characterized by an eventful history that begins in the Middle Ages and continues in the following centuries with the passage of the town from the Aldobrandeschi family to the Sforza and Cesarini, until the passage in 1624 to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Why Santa Fiora? Because the town received the honor of a quotation from Dante in Canto VI verse 111 of Purgatory, which is reported on a marble plaque at the entrance to the town (And you'll see how Santa Fiora is safe):
Too bad that the most accepted reading nowadays is E VEDRAI SANTA FIOR COM'E' OSCURA (DARK), as the verse is inserted in the famous invective against Italy that does not spare even this delightful village. We cautiously leave these disputes to the Dante experts and continue to visit the accessible beauties of the Tuscan village. Let's start with the Palazzo Pretorio, flanked by the Palazzo Sforza Cesarini, seat of the municipal administration:
Let's immerse ourselves now in the most beautiful things, going down a small road, to be done with caution, to the Pieve delle SS. Fiora e Lucilla, a church dating back to 1142 and rich in works of art, mainly the Renaissance terracotta by Andrea della Robbia, dating back to the end of the 15th century:
Let's take a look at the ancient village and its squares and streets:
Finally, let's move on to visit that park-garden built in the sixteenth century by the Sforza around the sources of the Fiora and called La Peschiera. From the large basin that forms the fish pond, the waters of the Fiora flow into another basin placed outside the boundary wall, surmounted by two dolphins with trident, once used as a drinking trough and then as a public wash house.
The small church that can be glimpsed is that of Santa Maria delle Nevi, unfortunately inaccessible to us at the time (who knows if something has been done in the meantime, if so please let us know); in the church you can see, under the floor, the sources of the Fiora, as well as the remarkable period frescoes. In short, at the end of the day we tried to show you a small part of Santa Fiora and we hope to have stimulated you to visit it, and perhaps to provide us with some additional information. We would be happy to publish it, just as we will try to publish other material relating to the Tuscan villages we visited in that August seven years ago.