Semifonte  Castle

No more traces of the castle.

Semifonte would have risen in the today council of Barberino Valdelsa in the on of a hill of about 300 meters high above to the actual inhabited area of Petrognano.

The zone of the Valdelsa, with the phenomenon of the 'Incastellamento' (fortification of the inhabitated areas) and the development of the feudal society, was studded of castles in large part under the control of the counts of the Alberti family since the year 1100. Semifonte was one of these castles, one of the last to be built, that knew a period of big development and importance on the to end of the 12th century, when it became, in full free-common age, the last rampart of the feudal power that, thanks to the descent of the Germanic emperors, try to resist to the Florentine with the goal to crush the towns autonomie with the support of the great families.

The hill where Semifonte rose was populated in a very short time,  from the beginning of 1181, and it became a sword in the side of the powerful Florence, a 'spite' wanted by the emperor Enrico IV that didn't see of good eye the new town realities. It seems that the inhabitants, too much sure of their strength, gambled with the death singing the well known refrain 'Firenze fatti in là Semifonte si fà città' (Florence leave Semifonte is becoming city) under the walls of Florence. The reaction of Florence was merciless and in 1202, after a long siege, Semifonte was completely destroyed, today we would say 'in scientific mode': nothing, neither the memory, didn't have even to stay. An edict imposed the absolute prohibition to reconstruct on the top of the hill. To remember Semifonte there are today only few ruins englobed in the farmer's houses on the hill and a chapel of the year 1597 with octagonal form, built thanks to a derogation at the edict, that reproduces in scale 1:8 the dome of the Cathedral of Florence. The scarce testimonies let us know that  the city was endowed of a walled enclosure of about three kilometers with four gates and, to the vertex of the inhabited area, of a castle with central keep surrounded by quadrilateral walls and angular towers.