The Fallaci family bought the property – the main house, the cultivated land, woodland and various outbuildings – in the mid 20thcentury.

The tradition of buying property in the country began many centuries ago. During the renaissance the aristocratic families liked to leave the heat of the Florence and spend the summer months in the country.

The professional and mercantile classes soon followed suit. It is to them that we owe the presence of so many beautiful villas in the hills around Florence – although not all of them are still as they were – with their avenues of cypresses and the fields cultivated with vines and olive trees. Nearby there were the houses where the agricultural labourers lived and worked, bound by the contract of mezzadria – half the produce to the proprietor and half to the labourer – which lasted until the 1960’s and 70’s when the peasant population progressively abandoned the countryside in favour of jobs in the cities.

Thus many estates were broken up and much of the cultivated land was left untended. About 30 years later in the areas around Siena and Florence the old houses found a new lease of life as accommodation for tourists and the old estates became modern farms and vineyards.

This was the destiny of the Fattoria Poggiarelli, once a farm which produced food for its owners, and now, after various renovations, the Fallaci family is happy to welcome tourists to its holiday apartments and bed and breakfast.