Semifonte

Semifonte, from Summo Fons, is a place in the heart of the Valdelsa, crossroads of the main trade routes of the Middle Ages. It was then, in the mid 12th century, when Federico Barbarossa came to Italy to make the Italian municipalities subjugate to the imperial power, that the Alberti counts, lords of Prato who were loyal to the emperor, decided to establish a settlement in this strategic place.

From its position Semifonte prevented Florence from expanding its supremacy over the Francigena route and the goods that were tranported there: the city acquired such importance as to be mentioned by Dante in his Comedy.

The contrast between Semifonte and Florence drove the Florentines to declare war on the rival and, after four years of siege, they razed the city to the ground and its castle to its foundations, issuing in 1203 a total ban on reconstruction in the same location.

At the end of the 16th century, Giovan Battista Capponi, Canon of Santa Maria del Fiore, asked the Grand Duke Ferdinando I de' Medici to waive the ban of three centuries earlier, so that a chapel could be built in the place where the Semifonte castle originally stood. The architect Santi di Tito created, in the following years, a small temple dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel that faithfully reproduces, in 1:8 scale, the Dome of the Florence cathedral: the symbol of Florence was now thus ruling the lands that had rebelled in the past against its power.