Il Molinello - Agriturismo nelle Crete Senesi


The assimilation of the extraordinary beauty of the landscape into the soul: a shock for the unaccustomed. Gather all the emotions experienced among the calanchi, biancane and green pastures, relax your eyes…This is the process one must follow to behold the extraordinary beauty enclosed within Palazzo Corboli, a large building that opens onto the main street of Asciano, within the door to Siena. Since 2002, this palace is the civic, archeological and sacred arts, museum. Palazzo Corboli was built in the 13th century by the extremely wealthy Ser Sozzo Bandinelli above a complex system of water mills and its first use seems to have been commercial. The internal walls were painted from the 1200s to half of the 1300s: the first decorations were of a naturalistic and architectural theme. A profane cycle was added in the 1370s . Today Palazzo Corboli is one of the rarest examples of a XIIIth century commercial centre that still has the Canova, the large room where all commercial rituals took place. On the second floor there are the archeological findings from the etruscan graves of the surroindings. Among these, the objects found in the Necropoli del Poggione, with ivory objects and bucchero reels, the burial artifacts from the Molinello tomb with rare examples of arcaic sculpture and metallic relics, and finally the reconstruction of the tomb of Poggio Pinci dating back to the period between the 5th and 1st centuries B.C. equipped with travertine and tuff urns, red ceramic statues, bronze vases, mirrors and goldware. The Museum of Sacred Art begins with a series of works that bear witness to the local political and religious history, until in the 1500s Asciano became a real economic pole that attracted the rich merchant families from Siena. There are a series of paintings by the greatest Sienese artists from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century: the Maestro dell’Osservanza (Natività della Vergine), Ambrogio Lorenzetti (among which San Michele Arcangelo che uccide il drago), Matteo di Giovanni (Madonna col Bambino e i Santi Giacomo, Agostino, Bernardino e Margherita), Rutilio Manetti (Visione di San Felice da Cantalice), Bernardino Mei (Crocifisso con la Vergine, San Francesco e Sant’Agata), Francesco Nasini (Crocifisso e dolenti), as well as many wooden sculptures among which the Angelo Annunciante and the Vergine Annunciata by Francesco Valdambrino. There is a remarkable collection of ceramics, jewels and liturgical furnishings.