The area of Panzano was already inhabited in Etruscan times, as evidenced by the discovery of a stele dating back to the 6th – 5th century BC. at the parish church of San Leolino, a stele later dispersed. Even in Roman times the area was densely inhabited, from that period numerous traces remain in the toponyms including Panzano himself. At the beginning of the 10th century, the Pieve di San Leolino in Flacciano, which later became Panzano, is mentioned.
In the twelfth century there is the first evidence of the name Panzano which is mentioned in the plebe Sancti Leolini sitam in Panzano while in the tenths of the thirteenth century the church of Santa Maria located in the castle is also mentioned. The castle of Panzano certainly had already developed before the 12th century and was among the possessions of the Firidolfi family.
Not many traces remain of the historical events of the castle. In the mid-thirteenth century, when the Florentine countryside was organized into leagues, Panzano was included in the Lega della Val di Greve. After the Battle of Montaperti in 1260 the castle was sacked and two towers had been destroyed by the victorious Ghibelline troops. During the war that opposed Florence with the Visconti of Milan, Panzano, in 1397, was occupied and sacked again by the troops of Alberico da Barbiano.
In 1478, the Sienese troops and their allies, the troops of the King of Naples Ferdinand II of Aragon invaded Chianti for the second time. On that occasion, the castle of Panzano was one of the most important bulwarks in defense of the republic of Florence, so much so that it became the seat of the Commissioner of the Republic. After the fall of the Republic of Siena in 1555, Panzano will no longer be involved in war events until 1944.
Monuments and places of interest
Torre del Cassero (The Castle)
The castle is the highest and oldest part of Panzano. A good part of the walls surrounding the hill are still preserved; on two sides, however, they have been reduced in height while in the south-east part they are completely missing. Some corner towers have also been preserved, one of which has been reused as the bell tower of the church of Santa Maria while still another retains the protruding apparatus.
The internal structure of the castle is simple; from the only access door, which originally perhaps had an anti-door, through a single road one arrives at a small square overlooked by the keep. The keep consists of a tall tower which rises higher than all the other buildings. Inside the castle there are other interesting buildings among which the one located next to the access door which has a clear medieval character should be noted. Due to the accuracy of the walls and the shape of the archivolts, all the buildings of the castle date the structures of the castle of Panzano to the 12th century. Built and which has always belonged to the Firidolfi family or from Panzano (which, according to some authors, urbanized in Florence and gave its name to the current Via Panzani), in the mid-nineteenth century it passed partly by succession and partly by repurchase from the Counts Mancini to the Buoninsegni family (later Tadini Buoninsegni) to which it belonged until the second half of the 20th century.
Just outside the castle was the ancient church dedicated to Santa Maria which at the end of the 19th century was replaced by the present one.
Village of Panzano
Outside the castle, along the access road that follows the ridge of the hill, the presence of a village has been ascertained as early as the 12th century, as reported in a document of 1146, burgus de castro de Panzano.
The village and the castle form what is currently the so-called Panzano Alto.
The village of Panzano is divided into two streets which, starting from a small square, go up parallel to the castle. Among the buildings of the village some show characters referable to the seventeenth or eighteenth century even if medieval structures overlook from under some crumbling plaster.
Bell
The area called Campana is the one that rises at the foot of the Panzano hill at the intersection of the road of the knolls which winds along the watershed between Greve and Pesa, joining the two localities on the edge of San Casciano in Val di It weighs on one side and Volpaia on the other, passing through the Castello delle Stinche, and the via Chiantigiana which leads to Radda in Chianti and Castellina in Chianti, (Passo di Campana 480 m asl). Its name derives from the shape of the square [Gastone Bucciarelli] which, seen from above, looks like a bell.
Campana was also mentioned in the Charter of the Capitani di Parte Guelfa made at the end of the 16th century; on that map it is called Piazza Panzanini and a beautiful sixteenth-century palace overlooks the square that still exists today.
Conca d’Oro
Conca d’Oro (Golden Bowl) is the sun-facing part of Panzano that overlooks and slopes down onto the wide valley of the torrent / river Pesa; from here a landscape as far as the eye can see of woods, vineyards and olive groves of central Tuscany. The name Conca d’oro refers to the extremely high value nowadays of this land
