Sinalunga

Sinalunga stands high up because the plain below turned back into marsh. In the Republican age, in the lower part, there was a posting station on the via Cassia called Ad Mensulas, and the Peutinger Table lists it along with the others of the area — Ad Graecos, Manliana — before reaching Sena Iulia, that is Siena; its main core must have stood where the Romanesque pieve of San Pietro ad Mensulas rises today. Then the empire ended, and with it the maintenance: the Etruscan canals that kept the Valdichiana dry, kept working throughout the Roman age, were abandoned, and the plain became a swamp. So people began to climb the hill, beneath the castle of the Ripe, and up there the town was born. A whole settlement moved because nobody looked after the ditches any more.

A document of 782 says that the village already had a place for public assemblies: a solid building where the community's papers and cash-box were kept. Later that building was turned into a church, and it is today's Santa Lucia: the seat of the commune become a place of worship. In 1197 a deed kept in the Caleffo Vecchio of the State Archive of Siena records the submission to Siena of the Cacciaconti, the family that dominated this area and from one of whose branches came the brigand Ghino di Tacco. As for the name, the town was called Asinalonga until 1864, when a royal decree shortened it to Sinalunga; the most credible explanation traces it to the shape of the rise, stretched along the ridge, but the source admits that the origin is unknown. The town remained, and the donkey disappeared.