Maiano:
the Village and its quarries
Maiano was the village where Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano Renaissance architects and sculptors came from, and where the sandstone quarries are located.
There is a small church John Temple Leader, who had purchased the villa and the farm of Maiano, had it rebuilt in 1885 in fourteenth Century style. There is an interesting monumental sepulchre composed of sarcophagus, niche and a late 17th Century stone statue of the Madonna.
The farm which had been a Benedictine monastery and is now owned by Miari Fulcis, features a cloister in pietra serena which contains a 13th Century fresco by Spinello Aretino depicting a "Mater Misericordiae".
Proceeding uphill beyond the church there is a colossal open-cast quarry on the left hand side which tells immediately of the change the landscape has been subjected to by several centuries of stone quarrying and by the geological composition of Monte Ceceri itself. The quarries of Fiesole which were exploited until the early twentieth Century are renowned for the "pietra serena" widely used by sculptors since the 15th Century. Mentioned by Benvenuto Cellini and Giorgio Vasari, Fiesole stone was used for architecture and monuments as well as for religious, non-religious and urban furnishings.
Oratory of the Crucifix of Fontelucente
In the 17th Century there was a group of houses, fewer than a village, and some working quarries half way down the steep, north-west slope of the St. Francis hill, that looked as though they were about to tumble into the Mugnone below. The place name comes from a spring already known in the 15th Century which began flowing as the pietra serena was hewn from the quarry as so often happens when blocks of this sedimentary rock are cut away. The brilliance (lucentezza) can still be seen as the water is struck by the light as it flows over the layers of rock.
Agnolo Poliziano wished to convey a neo-pagan literary image of this place which perhaps was a concrete expression of the popular belief that there was a magical, enchanted presence linked to the water: «Vicinus quoque adhuc Fesulano Rusculo meo, Lucens Fonticulus est; ita enim nomen habet, secreta in umbra delitescens, ubi sedem esse nunc quoque Lamiarum narrant mulierculae, quaecumque aquarum ventitant;» (cit. in Bandini A M., Lettere XII ad un amico [...], Florence 1880 p. 91).
The Lamias, creatures with a woman's body, later assimilated with witches and vampires were supposed to live in that very place, or so local womenfolk said.
The reformation that took place following the Council of Trent attempted to uproot all forms of paganism that still remained in the countryside. Springs and sources of water were consecrated with sacred objects and the object of cults and devotion, their waters becoming health-giving.
There used to be a crucifix in pietra serena at Fontelucente which was undoubtedly the handiwork of stonemasons and protected within a tabernacle.
On the basis of popular devotion a highly visible oratory church was built next to the quarry that encompassed the crucifix and the spring which still flows inside it and out through a fountain.
Inside the church there is a triptych by Mariotto di Nardo from 1398 of the Madonna della Cintola.
Similarly, and in the same period, an image of the Virgin was placed by the old underground spring in Borgunto to watch over the entrance and to spread the belief of the health-giving virtues of the water.
Via Vecchia Fiesolana
This steep and narrow road was the main thoroughfare to Fiesole until the time of the grand Duchy, in 1840 when the present road was opened. It still is one of the most beautiful ways to get to Fiesole on foot. Shortly after the turn-off the visitor comes to Villa "il Riposo dei Vescovi". The story is that the bishops paused here to rest on their way from Florence to Fiesole. Just about the half-way point stands the oratory of St. Ansano. It dates to the 11th Century and in 1795 it passed into the hands of Canon Angelo Maria Bandini, erudite antiquarian and philologist who radically renovated it and established an important collection of paintings which are now in the museum of his name. Here, the road harbours VIlla Medici and Villa Le Balze.
Further up is the former Convent of St. Girolamo.
Built in 1404 for the congregation of the hermits of St. Girolamo of the blessed Charles Count of Montegravello it was extended by Michelozzo under Cosimo the Elder. Up to a few years ago it was a hospice run by English nuns.
On the outside can be seen the cyclopean remains
of a part of the Etruscan city wall of the rock of St. Francis.
The Sotterra Springs
In the distant past, just outside the eastern Etruscan city wall of Fiesole stood a village whose name is still a puzzle for us, namely Borgunto.
Its actual position is intriguing – there must have been at least one link with the pre-Apennine ridge of Mugello in Etruscan and Roman times.
The indent between Montececeri and Poggio Magherini and the hill of St. Apollinare, then down to the centre of the village and beyond in the direction of the Mugnone valley contains a fault (a vertical fracture of the rock underground) which has always accumulated water and makes the place the richest in water springs in the whole area of Fiesole.
Celebrated by the learned and the antiquarians of the 19th Century as a work of Etruscan civilisation, it is an artificial grotto the first chamber of which is 10.5 metres deep and some 32.5 metres long from the bottom of the entrance staircase to the end in the direction of the village square (below the present-day butcher's shop – survey of 1997-98).
The indications are fairly certain that it was the continual source of water for the village of Borgunto (from Medieval times or even earlier) up to 1944 when it became a temporary air-raid shelter.
In 1937 Napoleone Raspanti signed a contract with the town council to pipe water from the spring to cool his ice-making plant.
After the war it fell into complete disuse.
Time has created a legendary halo around the spring, sometimes magic and religious associating the spring water with the Virgin Mary (a sacred image was probably placed at the entrance during the counter-reformation) and with the popular belief in the water's healing properties.
Montececeri:
the Quarries and Leonardo
The hill got its name from the swans that would flock there. The people of Florence called them "ceceri" from cecio meaning chickpea or wart because of the excrescence on their beaks.
Since ancient times this was a place famed for its pietra serena quarries which were exploited for stone to be used in all the important buildings in Fiesole, the Roman theatre, the Etruscan tombs, the Badia fiesolana and the Cattedrale… and in the 15th Century by the great Florence artists such as Brunelleschi, Vasari, Michelangelo and Cellini for the prestigious monuments and commonplace articles.
A wealthy tradition of artisan and artistic workmanship began to grow around pietra serena or Fiesole stone that lasted long throughout history. Indeed from the Etruscans to the Romans, from the Middle Ages to the present day the quarries were not only the place where raw material was obtained but also the school and workshop where craftsmen were trained and where continuity of every aspect of tradition was assured. A history of art, a history of social relations and of local economy and "industrial archaeology" blend together in this unique place.
This area, which has now become a historical naturalist park, counts 19 quarries (the most important being Cava Braschi, Righi and Sarti) which have been in disuse since the early 1900s and cannot be visited. However, the visitors can see the remains of a number of drystone storerooms built by the stonemasons to store their tools and the hollowed stone – rain-water drainage channels made by the masons by inserting stone diagonally into the ground.
Previously, Montececeri was wholly bereft of vegetation because of the quarrying but now is almost wholly green because of the plant replacement project begun in 1929 by the forestry commission.
Montececeri, however is not only quarries and pietra serena, but also a Leonardo da Vinci location. Indeed it was from the top of the hill that Leonardo tested his flying machine in 1506. The characteristics of the location, presuming they are unchanged since then, would have been the most suited – there is a sheer drop at the rock walls of the Sarti quarry. Leonardo mentions "Monte Ceceri" and drew the profile of the hills around Florence in sheet 20v of the Codex of Madrid II.
Legend has it that Tommaso Masini aka Zoroastro da Peretola, a pupil of Leonardo's in Milan and Florence tested the machine as mentioned in a note by Leonardo himself in the Codex of Flight.
© 2011 Comune di Fiesole — Via Portigiani, 3 — Fiesole (FI) // design by kidstudio — firenze
