San Gusmè Travel Journal • The guide of Siena and the countryside
In this video I’m going to tell you about a small cute and praised village situated in the Municipality of Castelnuovo Berardenga, one of the doors of Chianti!
Chianti is known for amazing wine, tours and bike rides…
Let’s examine closer what Luca Cava's little village is and what does it have to offer…
For the first time San Gusmè was mentioned in the Bille of sale from February of 867, in which Sienese earl Winigi di Ranieri gives to the Monastery of San Salvatore from Berardenga all his possessions situated in the surroundings of the church of Santi Cosma and Damiano.
From the XII century the village becomes the stronghold of Ricasoli family, famous also for the Baron Bettino, mayor of Florence and second president of the Council of the Kingdom of Italy after Cavour, who, it is said, is still living in the area around Brolio Castle as a ghost.
San Gusmè was united with the Municipality of Castelnuovo Berardenga in 1777.
The fest of Luca Cava is a local tradition, an initiative dedicated to the statue, made in 1888 by a local peasant, it represents a man in a position of body needs and it served to indicate the fact that one was completely welcome to do them there, in order to use the result as a fertiliser for the gardens… and here the mockery song was born.
Thanks to Silvio Gigli, an important Italian journalist born in Siena, the Fest in the honour of Luca Cava welcomes important guests from the Italian music panorama every year.
San Gusmè today still represents an example of a medieval fortified village, of a circular form, delimited by partly existent city wall. Of this wall, well represented in a plan of the end of the XVI century, some parts still remain, with its rectangular bastions, mostly englobed by later constructed buildings.
La pieve dei Santi Damiano e Cosma, from where the village takes its name is situated in San Gusmè, on its high altar is placed the Annunciation from the XV century, attributed to young Pietro Sorri, painter of the early XVII century, principally active between Siena and Florence, but also in the Tuscan and Italian cities, later he was identified as a mannerist by the style of Vasari, the architect of Uffizi gallery in Florence.
The church of Compagnia della Santissima Annunziata is also situated inside the village, with a standing neomedieval bell tower built between the end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX century.