The South Gate, the main entrance to the ancient castle, which interrupts the continuity of the outer perimeter by opening onto the main square. It, is the only monumental access that clearly separates the village from the outside and suddenly introduces into the small squares and narrow alleys of the village. It has a medieval layout with a machicolation for plumbed defense on which, at the end of the 16th century, the Medici coat of arms, marked by five balls and the upper lily, was affixed.
The noble family had in fact acquired the Baronia of Carapelle in 1579, and there are numerous architectural traces of that dominion that still dot the precious village today: Medici and finely worked by Tuscan-trained stonemasons are in fact as much the arched portals with flowered panels as some of the mullioned windows, the balcony brackets and most of the stone windows, such as those you are admiring here on the Palazzo della Loggia. This is a Proto-Renaissance palace of uncertain date characterized by a loggia on the top level that testifies to the need for widespread representativeness at the height of the growth of the herding economy. Valuable and historically interesting is the entrance arch with traces of a heraldic coat of arms later removed.
Photo by lorenzotaccioli.it.
