How old is our tower?

Our surreal reality of soon living in a (refurbished) historic tower intrigued us to find out the history of our new property. Our farmhouse was built around a 12th century tower, however, we could never find any historical record of it - until today. After hours of searching we found an interesting article by a local historian, Franco Ciappi, regarding the four mills along the Casciano stream: the “Frullino”, “San Claudio”, “Santa Teresa” and the most special for us, “La Torre”! 

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During this era, it was typical of mills to be named after saints, in order to bless the production and create abundant results. Ciappi states that La Torre was most probably a medieval fortified mill due to its vicinity along the stream of Casciano and the tower incorporated in the building that was later converted into a farmhouse. On the other hand, we can assume that La Torre was either part of a mill or a tower where the bishops or affluent families lived as the tower was neither given the title of a saint (which was the tradition of mills) and towers in this era were symbols of power where wealthy families or more important people lived.  

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The castle of Gambassi from 1037 through donations and acquisitions that ended in 1115, was owned by the bishops of Volterra, so there’s a possibility that our tower used to be ruled by the same bishops as they continued to practice their lordship in Gambassi until the late 13th century. Ciappi studied the historical cartography dated back to 1595 of the area and we believe this could be the very first picture of our tower! 

In the cadastre registry in 1830, around 190 years ago, La Torre was also the only mill/tower that appeared. Perhaps the other mills were nonexistent yet and we were the oldest one? We don’t know the answer for sure yet but it’s fascinating for us as this tower is over 800 years old and is still standing strong in the centre of our farmhouse.

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From the figure above, we can see the Church of San Lorenzo, in the later 1960s, this church was demolished in order to plant a vineyard which is the same vineyard in front of our farmhouse today. This piece of land is not a part of La Torre, yet we found this interesting as it would have been so different seeing an old church in front of our farmhouse instead of the vineyard. An old church staring towards our farmhouse may have been quite eerie during the night, but we will never know. We’re content with seeing the deers and wild boars running through the vineyards instead!

No matter if you are staying with us in the future, passing by the Via Francigena or visiting Tuscany, come check out the tower of our farmhouse as you’ll be amazed and delighted by our tower and hospitality!