Gargonza Castle

Of medieval origin, Gargonza's first mentions date to the 13th century. Because of its strategic position, this fortified hamlet was long at the center of the conflicts between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the two factions that divided medieval communal Italy. In the 13th century it was a feudal holding of the Ubertini family, one of Arezzo's most powerful, though its border location between the territories of Arezzo, Siena and Florence made it the subject of repeated disputes between these three city-states. According to some historians, Gargonza hosted Dante Alighieri in 1304, when he is said to have taken part in a meeting between Florentine and Arentine Guelphs.

After World War II, Gargonza was left uninhabited, but in the 1970s Count Roberto Guicciardini Corsi Salviati carried out a conservative restoration that preserved the architectural character of the old medieval village. With this intervention, Gargonza was transformed into an exclusive resort with rooms and apartments spread across the old village houses, preserving its tower, walls, 13th-century gate, and the 14th-century Romanesque church with its bell tower.

The Dante Alighieri association, while resting on historical tradition rather than definitive documentary proof, connects Gargonza to one of the most consequential political meetings of the early 14th century, when Florentine exile politics were shaped by exactly this kind of Guelph faction gathering.

Gargonza's border position between three competing medieval city-states — Arezzo, Siena and Florence — gave it a strategic significance disproportionate to its size, explaining the repeated disputes over its control during the Guelph-Ghibelline period.

The 1970s restoration under Count Guicciardini Corsi Salviati prioritized conservation over reconstruction, preserving the hamlet's genuine medieval fabric rather than reinventing it — a notably different approach from some of the more romantically "castellized" properties elsewhere in this collection.

The estate's 500 hectares of woodland, considerably larger than the typical castle-hotel garden, give guests staying at Gargonza a genuine sense of rural Tuscan landscape alongside the hamlet's own medieval architecture.