The territory of Radicondoli is divided into numerous villages and its economy is based on the hot springs and a large number of agritourisms. In this council you can admire the Elci castle, the convent of St. Francis and the parish of St. Simon. The castle of Radicondoli, along with that of Belforte, has been here since the beginning of the 13th century but its parish seems to date back to the 10th century, so it is very probable that an inhabited settlement around today’s capital town may have been established even before the year 1000AD. There was human presence here even in the Etruscan-Roman times, but the subsequent medieval installation completely deleted it.
We can only hypothesise that, being annexed to Volterra during the Roman era, the territory of Radicondoli was first at the centre of Scipione’s politics, who used that area as a Naval reference point, and then involved in the struggles between the Romans and Etruscan aristocracy from the 1st century BC.The community of Radicondoli seems to have been one of the first to give itself a real autonomous, civic organisation, through which it stipulated pacts and conventions with Siena and the Aldobrandeschi counts. It was these who, in 1216, incorporated it as a fief into their properties. Five years later the castles of Radicondoli and Belforte were offered as a guarantee to Siena, as a mortgage on the pact of loyalty that the counts had sworn to the city.
Far from having reached an agreement in this way, the council and the feudatories disputed the territory that was occupied by the Siennese in 1230 and then taken back by the Aldobrandeschi seven years later, renewing the oath of loyalty that had previously been broken. In the second half of the XIII century the Siennese mortgage on the two castles was eliminated. For a brief time, between 1260 and 1269 they were occupied by the Guelphs who forced Siena to buy them back. Subsequently, with the Aldobrandeschi ramifications, the two fortresses finished at the centre of a conflict for possession between the two new families. In 1541 the council became part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany under Cosimo I de’ Medici.
Source: www.turismo.intoscana.it
TRAVEL
For those who want to discover Tuscan landscapes step by step
FOOD
The true Tuscan tastes
WEDDING
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