Castel del Piano

The first witness of Castel del Piano is given by a document of the abbey of San Salvatore in the year 890, where he was appointed as Casale Plana. In 1175 it became a castle (castrum plani) of the Aldobrandeschi Counts of the Santa Fiora branch and in 1198 is called with the name of Plana Ferraria, probably due to the rocks of color ferrigno that dominate the plateau. In 1330 the Aldobrandeschi ceded to Siena half the country, that the next year was conquered definitively from the city of the Palio, after a siege controlled by the condottiere Guidoriccio da Fogliano. Castel del Piano remained under the dominion of Siena until 1559, when it was annexd by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. In this period the town experienced a strong increase of artistic and cultural interest, with the construction of palaces and the Renaissance and particularly the presence of numerous artists who founded a real school, as the dynasty of the baroque painters Nasini. In the nineteenth century, the casteldelpianesi participated actively in the uprisings of the Risorgimento. During the second world war, Castel del Piano saw the passage of the front ally and here stood the General De Gaulle. In 1965 closed the historic facility for the production of the tannic acid, an important economic resource of the territory, but almost equal step the municipality discovered an important new resource: the winter tourism, thanks to the opening of the first ski lifts to Macinaie and the Countess, still today very frequented.