Fèlsina is a special place, intrinsically hospitable. One can easily imagine that its founders saw it this way, the Etruscans, that ancient and enigmatic people who at the dawn of Italian civilization introduced the vine and the olive tree to the peninsula and who gave Fèlsina its distinctive identity, foreshadowing its agricultural vocation and consequent human association. The Romans too recognized it as a place blessed by nature, turning Fèlsina into a post station, and a place to rest, refresh oneself and meet fellow travellers along an important road, the “Via Antiqua” that connected
Siena and Arezzo. Today, the appearance that Fèlsina offers to travellers
arriving in the immediate vicinity from Castelnuovo is largely 18th-century, the result of renovations of the church and villa by the noble Florentine family of the Busatti of the Order of St. Stephen founded by Cosimo de’ Medici in 1561. But once upon a time this area was covered with mansions, castles, and the first religious complexes built under the patronage of the Berardenghi, an ancient Frankish line of nobility who settled here in 865 AD and eventually founded the Duchy of Siena. Still, the spirit remains the same: a place to meet others and take refreshment, then as well as today.
arriving in the immediate vicinity from Castelnuovo is largely 18th-century, the result of renovations of the church and villa by the noble Florentine family of the Busatti of the Order of St. Stephen founded by Cosimo de’ Medici in 1561. But once upon a time this area was covered with mansions, castles, and the first religious complexes built under the patronage of the Berardenghi, an ancient Frankish line of nobility who settled here in 865 AD and eventually founded the Duchy of Siena. Still, the spirit remains the same: a place to meet others and take refreshment, then as well as today.
