Montespertoli

The name is attested as Monte Sighipertuli in the year 1000: Monte plus a Germanic personal name, probably Lombard, Sighipert. But the documents write it in five different ways — Mons Sipertuli, Mons Expertulus, Montispetuli, Montisipertuli, Montespertori — and there is a rival explanation that reads into it Montis Petri apostoli, in memory of a supposed passage of the apostle Peter through these parts. The oldest centres of the territory, for that matter, lie elsewhere: the pieve of San Pietro in Mercato, which headed a League and was the seat of the podestà, and the village of Lucardo, the hub of a comitatus of Lombard origin. At the end of the fifteenth century the important market held at the pieve was transferred to Montespertoli, and with it moved the seat of the podesteria as well: the government followed the market.

In 1393 the borgo, with nearly two thirds of the territory, passed from the lords of Montespertoli — a branch of the counts Alberti — to the Machiavelli family, and for centuries the land belonged to the great Florentine houses: Machiavelli, Acciaioli, Guicciardini, Frescobaldi. On the twelfth of September 1310 Niccolò Acciaioli was born here, who became Grand Seneschal of the Angevin kingdom of Naples. Later came new owners: around 1840 the Sonnino bought the estate that still bears their name, and the castle of Montegufoni ended up with the Sitwells, an English literary family. And here is a fact the official story seldom tells: at the plebiscite of 1860 for the annexation of Tuscany to the kingdom of Sardinia, the yes votes at Montespertoli did not reach a majority of those entitled to vote — eight hundred and five votes out of nearly two thousand five hundred registered — with a record abstention that the source reads as opposition to the annexation.