Castello di Meleto historical timeline

It begins as monastic property. The first testimonies on Meleto date to the eleventh century, when it appears in the possession of the nearby Badia di Coltibuono. The estate dates the first written citation of the name to 1256, and traces its link with wine to the eleventh century and the Benedictines.

Then an emperor took it off its lord. It passed to a local feudal family of which only one name survives — a certain Guardellotto — who, through conflicts with the emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, was stripped by him of his possessions. The castle went to the Firidolfi, and from this holding the branch of that family called Firidolfi da Meleto took its name.

Its position turned it into a border fortress. Standing near the frontier between the territories of the Republics of Florence and Siena, the castle became first the principal Florentine bulwark of the area and then one of the main fortifications in the terziere di Gaiole of the Lega del Chianti. That made it a coveted prize, long contested by both contenders — although it never suffered serious destruction.

In 1478 it fell, and in 1480 it was taken back. During the second Aragonese invasion of the Chianti, in 1478, the castle was occupied by Aragonese troops allied to Siena; in 1480 the Florentines recovered it. The two cylindrical towers were built immediately after.

In 1529 it was besieged again and held. Imperial troops laid siege to Meleto; it did not fall.

In the eighteenth century the war ended for good and it became a villa. With the danger of sieges by then a distant memory, the castle was transformed into a villa — the frescoed and furnished rooms, and the theatre, belong to that conversion.

The twentieth century brought a public rescue of a private estate. Italian agriculture was in ferment after 1966, with the Piano Verde coming into force and customs barriers falling in the Common Market, which within two years brought around a hundred thousand workers back to the countryside. In May 1968 Gianni Mazzocchi launched the Operazione Vigneti; the half-billion lire it raised in two months restored viticulture at Meleto, abolished mezzadria here and created Viticola Toscana, "the realisation of a dream of sixteen hundred people from all over Italy".

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