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Historical archive of Cetona
The historical archive is located on the second floor of Palazzo Minutelli, headquarters of the Municipality of Cetona, and houses the writings of the community that survived fires (1522 and 1660)….
Municipal Library of Cetona
The Library’s first incarnation came with the institution, in 1865, of the Popular Library, as a transformation of the Reading Circle present at the time in Cetona
Cetaceans and mastodons of the Pliocene
In 1871 Vincenzo Luatti of Montepulciano sold Giovanni Capellini, professor of geology in Bologna, for the Royal Geological Institute, some dorsal-cervical whale vertebrae, found in the compact yellow sands of the Ricavo farm…
Garibaldi in Cetona
3 July 1849: Garibaldi, Anita and four thousand men leave Rome to reach the Tyrrhenian or Adriatic coasts and embark for the Republic of Venice, besieged by the Austrians. Fleeing northward over the Cassia…
The reclamation of the Val di Chiana
The Val di Chiana, mentioned as Clanis Aretinum by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia, is a valley that extends 60 kilometres from the Arno river near Arezzo to the north, up to the Val di Chiana Romana near Chiusi Scalo to the south…
The geology of Monte Cetona
The Montagna di Cetona is located south of the province of Siena, on the borders with Umbria and Lazio. 1,148 m above sea level, it separates the Siena – Radicofani basin from that of the Val di Chiana. It is the most extreme outcrop of the Mesozoic lands of the northern Apennines…
The cultivated hills
Monte Cetona is an isolated mountain in the extreme south of the province of Siena, between Valdichiana and Val d’Orcia. Once called Monte Piesi, it extends with its northern slopes to Castelluccio di Pienza, near the springs of the Astrone river, and towards the south it reaches San Casciano dei Bagni….
Lionello Balestrieri
Lionello Arduino Balestrieri was born in Cetona (SI) on 12 September 1872, into a family with a very modest economic situation, to Torello Balestrieri, a mason from Cetona, and Agnese Bassi, from Santa Fiora….
Pietro Carbonetti
Born in Cetona on 27 February 1865. Died on 19 May 1942.
The image of Carbonetti, parentage unknown, vagabond and wanderer, is imprinted in the local collective memory…
Toscanini’s doctor
Born in Piazze on 25 March 1869. Died in Piazze on 27 September 1935.
Returning after his daily visits to his patients, at one o’clock in the morning near his clinic, Dr Alberto Rinaldi was attacked from behind and repeatedly hit on the head with a club…
The Belverde holm oak
The main feature of the Belverde area is the tall-trunked holm oak, with specimens of considerable size located on the large blocks of travertine in the caves. The presence of holm oak seems to date…
The Bruscello of Piazze
It is not possible to reconstruct the origins of Bruscello in Piazze. Some testimonies recall the performances of the 1920s in the old town square, packed with peasant-actors in stage costumes, musicians and the audience, mostly coming from the surrounding countryside…
Marquis Giugni of Camporsevoli
The year was 1705, the fief of Camporsevoli was firmly owned by the Marquis Giugni, when a strange legal question arose between the latter and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Giovanni Andrea Morganzi, a vassal of Camporsevoli, killed his brother Morganzio …
Luca Contile
Luca Contile was born in Cetona in 1507 (more likely than in 1505) and died in Pavia in 1574. A fallen noble, a descendant of the ancient Ildobrandini family, counts of Cetona, he was sent while still a child to study in Siena, where he was one of the first attendees of the Accademia degli Intronati…