Discover Chianti

Beyond the crossroad with via di Faltignano, the road continues down to the 12th century village of Sant’Andrea in Percussina; its narne derives from Percumsna, which indicates its origin as an Etruscan settlement. The church was partly rebuilt after the Second World War and has a simple gabled facade. Inside there are two large 16th century pietra serena altars. On the right altar, belonging to the Machiavelli, is a Presentation at the Temple attributed to Pietro Confortini dated 1606. On the left altar is a fragment of a frescoed Annunciation by a 15th century Florentine painter close to Francesco d’Antonio. The High Altar in colored marble is probably 19th century. On the left wall of the presbytery some fragments of frescoes with stories from the life of Saint Andrew are still visible and are datable between the 14th and 15th centuries. The inn, manor house and tavern, all facing the road, are recorded at the beginning of the 15th century as properties of the Machiavelli family, but there have been some changes over the intervening centuries: on the site of today’s tavern there was once a loggia with a barn; and during the 15th century the Medieval manor house gained a more stately appearance with the addition of pietra serena decoration around the doors and windows of the facade, which was originally plastered. The small but precious Italian garden, accessed from the lemon house, is splendid. It is a walled-in garden, crossed by tall hedges of boxwood, which form a geometrical maze. The simple building to the right of the villa was the inn, with the tavern and the kitchen on the ground floor, and one large room where all the guests slept on the top floor.The properties passed on from the Machiavelli to the Serristori in the 17th century with the marriage of Cassandra de’ Ricci, daughter of the last Machiavelli descendant, to Antonio Serristori.

Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli was born to a noble family in 1469. He was not yet thirty when he was nominated Chancellor of the Republic, a charge within the Florentine Republican government which dealt with war and internal affairs. In 1512, the defeat of the French, allies of the Republic, brought the Medici back to power. In a futile attempt to keep his office, Machiavelli swore an oath of submission to Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, later Pope Leo X. Accused of participating in a conspiracy against the Medici, he was imprisoned and tortured. Upon his release he retired to his country house in Sant’Andrea. The great statesman described his days of exile in the small village in a famous letter to his friend Francesco Vettori, dated 1513. He spent the mornings in the woods checking on the wood-cutters’ work, or sitting by a spring reading the works of Latin and Italian poets; before lunch he would go out on the street and chat to passers by. He spent the rest of the afternoon at the tavern playing games with common people, the butcher, the miller, the kiln-men, often ending up in some brawl. In the evening, however, Machiavelli would take off his “day-time apparel” and wear his “royal and curial robes” in the tranquility of his study, reading the works of the great men of the past. Indeed, it was in Sant’Andrea that he conceived his most important writings, including his famous “The Prince”, the treatise on government, where, for the first time, politics is separated from morals.

-

Return to San Casciano in Val di Pesa