Montalceto

Montalceto, or MOUNT ALCETO, a castle in the Ombrone’s valley which is now destroyed, of which it rests only the tower on the top of the homonymous mount in the middle of a holm oak’ wood. The church of the Saints Sabino and Alberto of Montalceto, in the XII century, was an hermitage under the parish of Asciano, to which it was confirmed, together with other churches of this area, by a bill of the Pope Alessandro III. The hermitage became famous after that the blessed Alberto, an hermit from Camaldoli, lived here in penitence and died in 1150. At that time, the signory of Montalceto belonged to the family of Cacciaconti of the Scialenga, which then took the title from a count Baroti, master of Castel Baroti, near Armaiolo. Moreover the family Cacciaconti soon lost the signory of Montalceto, in favour of the Sienese Republic, which from 1208 on installed here an official representative. Owing to the resistance to the payment of the taxes to the Republic of Siena and their insubordinations, in 1274 Siena ordered the demolition of their houses and every kind of fortress in Montalceto. So, we imagine that the tower which exists still nowadays on the top of the mount, it has been rebuilt towards the middle of the XV century. In 1521 it was given to the Sienese Republic, together with the annexed lands to the noble Niccolò Borghesi, whose descendents used it for a long time. After the extinction of this dynasty Montalceto came back to the Community of Asciano. Then, it became a property of the nuns of Saint Chiara of Siena. When their monastery was eliminated (1808), Montalceto and the annexed lands came to the State Property Office , which sold it again to some private citizens. At present, Montalceto is a farm on the foot of the mount which faces south-westwards. But Montalceto was more renowned for its thermal waters, which gush out from the western side of the hill. The use of these waters is known since the beginning of the XIV century, because it appears from a statistic report ordered by the sienese Republic in 1333 to Simone di Jacopo Tondi and published in the histories of that Republic by Giugurta Tommasi. They were confirmed in the XVIII century, when the Baths of Montalceto were described by the naturalist Baldassarri in 1779 and then by Battini, who published an analysis of those waters. The BATHS OF MONTALCETO were attended in different times by several influential people and they worked until the first years of the XX century. They are situated on the homonymous mount in the sienese Val d’Ombrone, about a mile away from the road Regio Lauretana, which from Siena leads to Asciano, going through Montalceto in Val di Chiana, Community Jurisdiction and 4 miles eastwards from Asciano and 19 miles from Siena. These sources belong to the class of the thermal acidulous waters, of which the hills of the valleys of Ombrone, Orcia and Merse are rich. They apparently spring from the cuts of porous travertine which lays on the tuff and on the shell-shaped marl, mentioned in the article of the Community of Asciano. The highest part of the hill of Montalceto, from the sides of which spring the thermal waters, , is surrounded by rocks of calcareous magnesia and veined with banks of siliceous breccias, seams of stone-flint and cliffs of a calcareous stone become cellulose , from the spaces left empty by the gas which developed there. It was rectified later by the professor Giorgio santi, who wrote a report which is put in his third journey through the sienese Provinces. Recently , about 50 years ago, numerous Etruscan graves have been discovered near the Baths. From the following studies and analysis, it comes that Montalceto had an Etruscan origin, prior to that of Asciano, which dates back to the Roman period.