Rapolano Terme

The comune was called simply Rapolano until 1949, when it added the Terme. Its arms, granted in 1886, carry a silver lion holding a turnip, a rapa: that is the way the heraldry reads the name of the place. The waters are two, one on either side of the town: the Terme San Giovanni, set among the Sienese hills, and the Terme Antica Querciolaia, close to the houses. We are in the Crete Senesi, and the black and white of the gonfalone are the colours of the arms of Siena.

In the old centre, built beside a piece of the ancient walls, stands the porta dei Tintori, the dyers' gate: they made it in the fourteenth century and it is the oldest way into the village. Three castles stand in the territory — that of Modanella, that of the Serre and that of San Gimignanello — and every settlement keeps its own churches: Serre di Rapolano has the pieve of Santi Andrea e Lorenzo, the Cappella di Piazza and the church of the company of Santa Caterina della Misericordia, while Poggio Santa Cecilia has three of its own. And for a village of five thousand people, Rapolano keeps three theatres: the Teatro del Popolo, the Teatro Verdi and the Teatro Gori Martini.