ASKMECOLLE
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Dante’s Epigraph
Our attention is immediately captured by a marble plaque inscribed with a verse from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. The verses are from the 13th Canto of Purgatory and tell the story of Sapia Salvani. She was a Sienese noblewoman, who witnessed from Arnolfo’s tower the famous Battle of Colle that took place on 17th June 1296. It was just one of a series of battles fought between the Sienese Ghibellines and the Florentine Guelphs for the hegemony in the province. In this battle the Guelph Colle sided with Florence against Siena hoping to defeat the latter to expand territorially in the province. Dante’s verses express Sapia’s happiness for the defeat of her fellow Ghibellines, led by her nephew Provenzano Salvani just because she was jealous of him. As a matter of fact Dante places Sapia in Purgatory because of her envy. In the Tower, there are frescoes by the partisan painter Terreni which represent some scenes of this crucial battle.
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Bastion of Sapia
Sapia Salvani Sapia Salvani was a Sienese nobelwoman. In Dante’s Divine Comedy she is placed among the envious souls of Purgatory for having rejoiced when her fellow townspeople, led by her nephew Provenzano Salvani, lost to the Florentine Guelphs at the battle of Colle in 1269. Despite this, Sapia was also a charitable woman, as demonstrated by her founding in 1274 a hospice for pilgrims, known as the Santa Maria hospice; located at the foot of Castiglioncello, along the Via Francigena, it was later given to the Republic of Siena, for the benefit of the city’s largest hospital. A legend says that Sapìa was murdered in Colle Val d’Elsa in Via delle Volte, behind Palazzo Luci.
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