sul Monte Amiata
It was the Holy Mountain of the Etruscans. Lived by the Romans for the numerous thermal centers, it had a period of great development after the Longobard domination. The Abbey of San Salvatore, the Amiatina Bible, the castles, parish churches, are all symbols of an important epoch which saw the Amiata as a land of conflicts of great potentates. The Benedictine Monks, the Aldobrandeschi (one of the most important comitial families between the low and the high Middle Ages) and then the Republic of Siena, the Medici of Florence, the Sforza of Milan.
However, everyone has left a trace of their passage through the territory. The statutes granted on several occasions to the proud peoples, valued the cultures of the olive and chestnut thanks to which hunger was rarely suffered. Of great importance is the epoch linked to mining exploitation which has marked over a century of history and which today is represented in the various museums of mine. In modern times the aura of sacredness of the Amiata was fed by the events linked to David Lazzaretti and to the Tibetan community of Merigar, founded in the 1980s. Also an artist such as Daniel Spoerri has chosen the Amiata for his extraordinary garden. In addition to this, the culture of food. Wine, oil, chestnuts, mushrooms, cheeses, and baked goods represent the expression of a culture that was forged under the power of man’s domination and the action of a nature as beautiful as we see today.
