The origins of Montaione

 The legend

 The legend narrates us of Ajone, a young noble Volterrano that, passing from these places, then covered by a sharp pain forest, it found in a small house, Ine, that the fate of his/her/their daughter cried, Give birth of it, abducted from a certain Gambasso. Ajone, that had decided to free the beautiful young girl, entered war against his/her kidnapper and, beaten him/it, sipped Give birth of it, he/she married her/it, it founded the country of Mountain Ajone and, to little distance, he/she built the castle of "Give birth of it."

 Time after the descendants of Ajone and Give birth of it, they were found to face a hostile army that, after a long siege, he/she succeeded in entering the castle destroying him/it. The people of Mountain Ajone, lost the guide and lost the faith, he/she returned to the idolatry and definite to sacrifice to the gods "Filli", the most beautiful young girl of the country, so that the peace and the prosperity but a young Florentine rider brought, passing from that places, he/she was aghast from the human sacrifice that he was about to perpetrate and attracted by the beauty of Filli, he/she forced the canters to free the girl and to sacrifice a vitella to his/her place. The young one, married then Filli, and it reconstructed the castle of Give birth of it, where they lived happy for many years.

 The youth was so in love of its Filli, that always called her/it "expensive Filli ". It was so that him same you/he/she had called "Fillicara." Their descendants called Fillicara, then turned into Filicaja, and they had as emblem the red suit torn by the torments of the torture, that Filli had given to his/her liberator and that these you/he/she had used as flag. (The Filicajas still live to Montaione, really in the called place "To the Filicaja").

The history

 Montaione is a country of origin etrusca; the confirmation is had by the recoveries of some necropolises and furnaces near Iano, Castelfalfi, Bellafonte and Knoll to the Aglione. The most ancient found again find is a stele of the You century to.C. what a warrior reproduces with helmet, lance and shield on a tomb stone that brings the age of the dead one. The stele has been recovered near the inhabited area of Iano, and currently it is found near the Archaeological Superintendence in Florence. Other finds have been recovered near Castelfalfi (grave etrusca with urns of style volterrano), near Knoll to the Aglione and in the place Give birth of it. Today it is not difficult to find finds etruschi in surface in the place Rignano yet and near the inhabited area of Saint Stephen.

The recoveries of the Roman epoch, are scarce instead, since the colonization was less intense than that etrusca. The most important monument is the situated Roman cistern in the proximities of Montaione, in the place Sant'Antonio, overlooking to the road that brings to the Knoll to the Aglione. The cistern, long 27 meters and wide 3, have an ability of 200.000 liters; it was a reservoir of decantazione that received the water of some rising ones, still present on the slope north of the Knoll to the Aglione, and it served an inhabited area of big dimensions, situated more to valley.

Other testimonies of the epoch are: the furnaces of the Muraccio and Bellafonte.

Of the period paleocristianos are had testimonies in the place St. Biagio, where a mine existed exploited by the Etruschis and where we find an oratorical paleocristiano, perhaps built on a grave etrusca.

You increase news of the places they are had after the barbaric invasions, when on the old ruins, particularly in the places that offered great safety, the Longobardis built new installations, often strengthened, with churches in Romanesque style and town buildings, since almost all they were free Communes. Of the epoch we have rests of dikes and mills along the river Evola and, in the woods, ruins of furnaces of mortar and tiles and of furnaces for the workmanship of the glass.

In the 572 d.C. the dukedom is founded longobardo of Lucca and its last duke (the next to last one, according to some) it gives his/her own name to a village that calls Mons Allonis; subsequently the name will change in Montacone, then in Climbed on of it, therefore in the actual Montaione.

More or less to the same period they go up again the news of a called castle Give birth of it, reconstructed on a small fortress slow-Roman. The toponimo seems to go up again to the Latin "figulinae", pointing out the place where the Romans found a lot of (figurines) figurines etrusche.

Toward the 700 d.C. the longobardo Faolfi founds the "Castrum Faolfi", the actual Castelfalfi.

In the 981 d.C. we find quoted the castle of "Montacunni", but the date more some that identifies the actual Montaione is 1257, when an organized community is identified, in a country encircled by boundaries inserted in the district of St. Miniated, is pad among the Republics in Florence, Siena and Pisa. In 1268 the montaionesis offered the castle to St. Gimignano provoking a controversy for to compose which Florence intervened, under that the return of Montaione established St. Miniated. From that control it was freed only in 1369 and in 1370 it entered to belong to the Florentine contado becoming center of a potestà. The life of these communities "of frontier", it was not easy not at all, for the continuous invasions that provoked lootings and fires. In 1395, during a war between Florentines and pisani, the castle of Castelfalfi was destroyed; subsequently you/he/she was reconstructed as he currently introduces, crowned from four towers from bastions and from solid boundaries.

In the following centuries the economy, based almost totally on the agriculture, Montaione conducted "in the anonymity" and its territory progressively reduced him among the end of the eight hundred and the first years of the Nine hundred, when Balconevisi and S. Quintinos passed under the Commune of St. Miniated, Cedars it passed to the Commune of Peccioli, the fractions of Coiano and Castelnuovo they passed under Castelfiorentino, Parsonage and Lariano to the Commune of St. Gimignano, and in 1917, when Gambassi, with the fractions of Varna, Chestnut tree and Catignano, it became common autonomous.

The inurbazione provoked by the industrialization of the sixties, provoked an exodus that had been depopulating the countries and solo for little time it is assisted to a return of the population and to the recovery of the abandoned rural structures. Everything this, however, has also had positive aspects, because you/he/she has done yes that the places almost maintained intact his/her own characteristics, defaced not by the wild industrialization that has condemned other territories.