The Elevator & The Bastion 12. Palazzo Masson

21. The Cathedral Square & Via delle Volte

The Town Hall, formerly the Podesta’s Palace, and People’s Palace overlook the Cathedral Square. From the Middle Ages to the 19th century these palaces were the center of the political and religious power of Colle. The first one, dating back to the thirteenth century, shows the typical characteristics of seats of power. The façade presents numerous coats of arms of former chief magistrates along with two towers. The tower on the left - the ancient tower of the Municipality - was shortened due to a collapse in 1636, while the one on the right is the Cathedral’s belfry. The Podesta’s Palace is richly frescoed which includes a Madonna with Saints and an Annunciation by Giovanni Maria Tolosani. There were two other seats representing municipal power, Palazzo dei Priori (Priors’ Palace), found along Via di Castello - and the People’s Palace which is opposite the Podesta’s Palace . The remaining places that frame the square are the Bishop’s Palace, the Palazzo Pretorio, the Palazzo Giusti (which was the former seat of the Captain of the People) and the Episcopal Seminary. At the end of the square you can also see the fountain of the Cathedral, with an eggshaped pool and a sponge stone niche, built in 1605. From the square there is also the Street of the Arches, an enchanting vaulted tunnel that passes under the palaces and their hanging gardens until it reconnects with Via di castello (Castle Street) where Palazzo Campana rises. A note of interest, there is a marble plaque in the square commemorating the visit of the Grand Duke, Pietro Leopoldo, King of Hungary, Prince of Bohemia, Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1773. The Grand Duke also visited the cathedral to pay homage to the Holy Nail, a relic of the Crucifixion of Jesus, which according to tradition arrived in Colle in the nineth century. The cathedral had been previously visited by the Grand Duke Cosimo II with his mother Cristina of Lorraine in 1611. In the square is the Cathedral dedicated to the saints Marziale, Faustino, Giovita and Alberto, whose construction began around 1602, ten years after Colle was made the seat of a bishop. The church, co-cathedral since 1986, was built on a preexistent chapel, consecrated to the Savior, subsequently turned into a parish church. Its façade with seven blind arches and Corinthian capitals is still visible on the left wall of the current cathedral. On the right side remains a sandstone block with the inscription “M. Bonamicus”, who was probably the master builder of the chapel, recycled into the construction. The façade of the Cathedral was built only in the first decades of the nineteenth century by Agostino Fantastici with a sober and essential style and articulated with different materials. The symbols of the Passion and the Holy Nail (kept inside) are very interesting and represented on the central gate. To the left of the Cathedral there is the Bell Tower built in 1632 by Bernardino Renieri, on which the large clock was then placed in 1807.

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22-23. Colle di Val d’Elsa Cathedral

22. Exterior 23. Interior The interior of the Cathedral looks like a large space with three naves (the central is larger than the lateral ones), with a large transept and a semicircular apse. The covering is made by barrel vaults in the central nave and in the transept, at their crossing point should have been grafted a chapel, which was never built, while the aisles are covered by cross vaults. Inside the Cathedral there are ten chapels. The first on the right, the chapel of San Marziale, is enriched with the paintings of the seventeenth-century painter Giovanni Paolo Melchiorri and dedicated to the Patron Saints. Continuing along the nave, in the fourth chapel, there is the splendid Nativity by the Caravaggesque painter Manetti. At the end of this nave is located the most important chapel, that is the chapel of the Sacro Chiodo which preserves the sacred relic of the Crucifixion of Christ inside an elegant fifteenth-century tabernacle. Above the altar there is the bronze Crucifix by Pietro Tacca and, in the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, the visitors can admire mosaic inlay using precious marble; in succession there is the chapel of Saint Alberto, modernized at the end of the nineteenth-century that houses the relics of the archpriest Alberto da Chiatina.

The Holy Nail

The legend of the Holy Nail, which is stored in the chapel of the right transept, narrates that the nail was offered by the Pope to a French bishop who got seriously sick near Viterbo during the trip back from Rome. Before dying he gave the precious nail to his travel companion, a priest born in Bibbiano, a small hamlet of Colle di Val d’Elsa. After the priest’s death, according to his final will, the Sacred Nail should have been kept in Colle or San Gimignano. The first people that had reached Bibbiano would have kept the Nail. Upon hearing the news, the people of Colle arrived first, gaining this way the conservation of the relic. The Sacred Nail has a miraculous function for Colle and thanks to it the natural catastrophes that hit the city during the centuries ended quickly. It also has an important ceremonial aspect for the people of Colle to the point that every year in September a procession is held during which the relic is exposed in front of the bishop.

24. Palazzo Luci

During the 14th century this building was the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo, literally, the Palace of the Captain of the People, the seat of the municipal power. Around the mid 16th century the building became the property of the Luci family. The palace, built on a pre-existing medieval structure, has a complex architectural structure. Under the Lucis the place acquired its suggestive late mannerist style. The facade is embellished with two side balconies which have travertine balustrades, while the windows are reached with elegant smooth ashlar frames.

In the 19th century the palace became the property of the Salvetti family to which the painter Antonio Salvetti belonged. He was an architect by profession and the first socialist mayor of Colle Val d’Elsa. The city has remembered with a plaque on the façade. According to tradition, Sapia Salvani, the famed protagonist of Dante’s Purgatory, was murdered behind the palace.

This ancient military structure was a distinctive defensive element of the fortification of Colle. From this a stronghold it is possible to have a wide view of the city including the Borgo of Santa Catarina, the Convent of San Francis and the cathedral. The name of the structure comes from a character which Dante Alighieri describes in the XIII Canto of Purgatory of his great poem The Divine Comedy.

25. Bastion of Sapia 26. The voice weakens

Along the outer perimeter of the bastion’s walls there’s a marble column, almost completely buried, of which only the upper part can be seen. The artwork, erected in 1998, was created by the conceptual Ukrainian artist Ilya Kabakov and on top there’s a sculptured open book with the following inscription in low relief:

“I supported the temple with my highness The temple was cruel and just a half of me is left Years will go by and I will be completely covered by dirt And you, walking above me, will not even notice me.”

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Antonio Salvetti

Antonio Salvetti was born within the ancient walls of Onci, in the ancient heart of Colle. He was an architect and a painter and above all one of the animators of the cultural life of the city at the end of the nineteenth century, along with Vittorio Meoni. Moreover, he worked as an art photographer and teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. He made numerous paintings, some of which are exhibited in the Museo San Pietro of Colle di Val d’Elsa. He collaborated with artists belonging to the Italian artistic movement of Macchiaioli, such as Niccolò Cannicci and Telemaco Signorini and, more superficially, with Giovanni Fattori. He designed and built civil and religious buildings. Among the architectural works he left in Colle Val d’Elsa, it is worth mentioning the bell tower of the church of Sant’Agostino, the Palazzo Masson (built in 1876 in the place of the Porta al Canto, just above the Baluardo), the Church of Mensanello and the Cimitero della Misericordia where he was buried.Salvetti also realized the two bas-reliefs placed at the entrance of the “Palazzone”, today seat of the university. On 7th March of 1897, Salvetti became mayor of Colle di Val D’Elsa and one of the first socialist mayors of Italy and ruled the town until 1899. He died in 1931.