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 Erected
by the Cadolingi of Montecascioli, the Castle of Bibbione is
documented in the very ancient manuscripts from the year 997 by the name
of Castrum Bibionis.
Surrounded by city walls, which in the past served as a final defence
for its inhabitants, the Castle dominates a medieval village and ancient
houses dot the slope of the hill.
Its lands extend to below the Via Cassia and the Pesa River.
The foundations of the Castle go back to the 9th century and the
construction was completed in year 1000, while the first group of stone
farmhouses dates back to the latter half of the 13th century.
In the Renaissance, the battlements were removed and the fortification was
then transformed into a country residence. A particularity of the Castle
is the underground passage which winds its way for hundreds of meters down
to the river plain. This
secret passage, certainly used for supplies during the sieges, has only
been explored in its first section. 
In 1124, the new owners of the land, the
Buondelmonti, restored the old ruined sentinel.
Thus, Bibbione became one of the four Buondelmonti Castles,
connected one to the other and constituting a quadrilateral in defence of
the Pesa Valley: the Bibbione Castle, the Montefiridolfi Castle, the
Pergolato and the S. Andrea ones at Fabbrica.
Moreover, the Buondelmonti family had a small church, Santa Maria, built
between the 12th and the 13th centuries next to the walls of the Castle.
In the year 1142, they began the reconstruction
of the shelter of San Jacopo of the Calzaiuoli for the pilgrims.
In 1469, the property was sold to Guido Sforza
Aldobrandeschi.
 In
the year 1511, Niccolò Machiavelli (who possessed family
estates about 6 km, from Bibbione in Sant’Andrea in Percussina) bought the
Castle and the farmland using it as a hunting lodge.
The
Machiavelli’s remained in possession of the complex until 1727, when the
last heir, Francesco Machiavelli, died leaving his cousin, Giovanni
Battista Rangoni, a Modenese noble descendent of the Machiavelli, heir
to the name and inheritance, title and heraldic arms of Machiavelli who
took on the name of Rangoni Machiavelli.
The entire complex remains bound from 1913, and therefore, under the
tutorship of the Superintendent of Culture, Environment and Architecture
of Florence and Pistoia.
At present, the Marchioness Antonella Rangoni Machiavelli is the
proprietor of the estate and personally saw to the renovation of the
Castle and medieval village begun in 1985. |
