Discovering Ripa d’Orcia Village
Standing on high ground, Ripa d’Orcia Castle is encircled by towers, battlements and bastions which made access to the village and the higher more solid turret difficult. As with other fortresses of the period, it is easy to imagine drawbridges, portcullises or iron and heavy wooden beams used as powerful defensive means and invincible impediments to unfortunate assailants.
The external walls delimit the extremities of a hillock stretched over the Orcia valley. They enclose a group of houses (the village) set out along two parallel streets that follow the relief of the hill.
Over and above the houses there are the Church dedicated to St. Mary of the Snows, a row of gardens and vegetable gardens and, lastly, the actual Castle which consists of three distinct elements.
Passing beneath the turret that stands over the access gate is like going back in time and rediscovering architectures and life styles which, though modified over the ages, are fundamental to our history and tradition.
The internal street takes us on a voyage of discovery through ancient ways of life, ancient trades and an autarchic economic organisation. In fact each building was specific to an activity necessary for the support and subsistence of the population within the walls and that of the surrounding countryside: the homes of the workers, administrators and parish priest, the bread room, the carpentry workshop, the blacksmith’s forge, grain and olive mills, granaries, wine-cellars and cheese room, vegetable gardens and courtyards… all bearing witness to a society and economy that were self sufficient and organised in accordance with internal rules and statutes (see the Statement of the Villa di Ripa d’Orcia – 18th century).
Walking along the street you come to the small village church with its vaulting cell campanile whose single bell bears the words: “Riccardus Florentinus Me Fecit A.D. MCCCXXXIII”. Though the church was embellished over the centuries with paintings by the Sienese artist Antonio Bonfigli (1680-1750) and 18th century paintings depicting Saints Sebastian, Rochus, Anthony the Abbot and Luigi Gonzaga, time and the depredations of the second world war stripped it off these traces of our predecessors’ artistic genius.
From the church the street rises, amid the ancient houses and the vegetable gardens, to an open space from which the central structure may be admired in all its grandeur.
The high quadrilateral tower has large-vaulted dormitories and oblong windows, a triangular arcaded courtyard with the characteristic well in travertine, and a rectangular main part separated from the turret by an open vestibule. The rectangular part adjacent to the battlemented turret is on three floors: the former cellar, the banqueting hall and the former weapons room. The lookout post is highly evocative, with a Dantesque view of the Rocca a Tentennano and the beauty of the landscape by the river Orcia far below.
The external walls delimit the extremities of a hillock stretched over the Orcia valley. They enclose a group of houses (the village) set out along two parallel streets that follow the relief of the hill.
Over and above the houses there are the Church dedicated to St. Mary of the Snows, a row of gardens and vegetable gardens and, lastly, the actual Castle which consists of three distinct elements.
Passing beneath the turret that stands over the access gate is like going back in time and rediscovering architectures and life styles which, though modified over the ages, are fundamental to our history and tradition.
The internal street takes us on a voyage of discovery through ancient ways of life, ancient trades and an autarchic economic organisation. In fact each building was specific to an activity necessary for the support and subsistence of the population within the walls and that of the surrounding countryside: the homes of the workers, administrators and parish priest, the bread room, the carpentry workshop, the blacksmith’s forge, grain and olive mills, granaries, wine-cellars and cheese room, vegetable gardens and courtyards… all bearing witness to a society and economy that were self sufficient and organised in accordance with internal rules and statutes (see the Statement of the Villa di Ripa d’Orcia – 18th century).
Walking along the street you come to the small village church with its vaulting cell campanile whose single bell bears the words: “Riccardus Florentinus Me Fecit A.D. MCCCXXXIII”. Though the church was embellished over the centuries with paintings by the Sienese artist Antonio Bonfigli (1680-1750) and 18th century paintings depicting Saints Sebastian, Rochus, Anthony the Abbot and Luigi Gonzaga, time and the depredations of the second world war stripped it off these traces of our predecessors’ artistic genius.
From the church the street rises, amid the ancient houses and the vegetable gardens, to an open space from which the central structure may be admired in all its grandeur.
The high quadrilateral tower has large-vaulted dormitories and oblong windows, a triangular arcaded courtyard with the characteristic well in travertine, and a rectangular main part separated from the turret by an open vestibule. The rectangular part adjacent to the battlemented turret is on three floors: the former cellar, the banqueting hall and the former weapons room. The lookout post is highly evocative, with a Dantesque view of the Rocca a Tentennano and the beauty of the landscape by the river Orcia far below.