Guido Sforza, who got the county by marrying the last of the Aldobrandeschi, filled Santa Fiora with terracottas by Andrea della Robbia, built the Peschiera and more than once played host to pope Pius II. In local memory, though, he is remembered above all for having killed a dragon that infested these woods: the beast's skull is kept in the convent of the Selva.
Santa Fiora appears in a document of 890, and in 1082 it was a villa with more than a hundred farms. It was the capital of a county that held half the Amiata, and in the thirteenth century the centre of Ghibelline resistance to Siena: which is why Dante names it, in the sixth canto of the Purgatorio. Between the nineteenth and the twentieth century cinnabar was mined here, and people came from all over Tuscany.
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📅 Every year, on 29 July
Santa Fiora celebrates Saints Flora and Lucilla on 29 July. In Marroneto, the «Carnevale morto» is passed down, a re-enactment in which Lent bids farewell to Carnival.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Santa Fiora, but an easy day trip away.
