Great famous men have passed through the Chianti lands. Here are some examples. Giovanni da Verrazzano, the great navigator who discovered the Bay of New York in 1524, was born in Greve in Chianti.
Niccolò Machiavelli, when he was exiled from Florence in 1512 in a hamlet of St Casciano, St Andrea in Percussina in a house later known as “Albergaccio”, in this place he wrote “Il Principe” and kept the paternal tradition of oil and wine producer.
In Castellina in Chianti there is “Tenuta il Grignanello”, which was owned by the Galileo Galilei’s family who sold it personally in 1778.
Leonardo Da Vinci was a regular visitor of the Chianti area and it even seems that he painted here the Mona Lisa. In particular, according to some hypotheses, it seems that “Fattoria la Ripa”, between Castellina and San Donato in Poggio, was the home of the beautiful and enigmatic lady subject of the portrait.
Michelangelo Buonarroti, whose grandchildren had farms in the Chianti area, was a regular presence here.
There is even the hypothesis that the other great navigator Amerigo Vespucci may have been born in the small village of Montefioralle, where one of the buildings is marked by the letter V and certainly the family here had some possessions.
These are just some examples of the dozens of great men and women who lived and were protagonists of their time in the Land of Chianti.
Categorised in: Celebrities, Wine Stories
