old Palazzo Scalandroni bearing the name of the owners – one of the most ancient local families. Polcanto’s NeoGothic Church of San Donato was built in 1939; however there existed, prior to the 1919 earthquake, a building dedicated to Saint Donatus, set atop a low mountain below Mount Senario. The church houses a fresco with the Holy Family and Saint John as a Child from the 16th century, detached from a road-side tabernacle situated on the road to Salaiole. From Polcanto a left turn-off leads to the Abbey of Buonsollazzo, in Tassaia. According to Giovanni Villani, the 14th-century Florentine chronicler, the abbey was founded by Count Ugo di Toscana (10th century); however, there is no documented evidence of the building prior to the 11th century. Traces of the ancient construction can be seen in the remains of the Benedictine cloister (walled-up capitals and pillars), while the elegant columns with their 15th-century capitals belong to the later Cistercian cloister which was walled up in 1880. The present aspect of the church is the result of alterations carried out under Grand Duke Cosimo iii, who entrusted the abbey to Trappist monks. The architect Giovan Battista Foggini was charged with the project, which started in 1705: the church was redesigned to present a single-aisled interior, with large stone-framed windows, ending in a wide apse delineated by simple stone pilasters. The apse houses a polychrome altar on which are set plaster statues of the Maborgo san lorenzo
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donna and Child with Saints Bartholomew and John. The elegant facade is bordered by simple antae in stone; the portal, set in the centre, is surmounted by a lintel above which is a small and elegant window framed with delicate volutes at the base, whereas the arched tympanum above houses a gorgeous marble scroll. A window, crowned with a triangular tympanum, opens higher up, while a rich Medici coat of arms in marble stands out up above on the wall. Continuing along Via Faentina we follow the bed of the Faltona torrent and reach the Parish Church of Santa Felicita a Larciano, in Val di Faltona. The church, with a basilican plan, was once part of a monastery first mentioned in documents dating back to 1020. The main body of the church (with a nave and two aisles) ends in an apse decorated, on the outside, with small blind hanging arches. Six blind double lancet windows, characteristic of the Lombard Romanesque style, also adorn the apse, while a slender bell tower rises next to the church. The building was altered a number of times, undergoing particularly important renovations between 1897 and 1904, when Leto Chini, who attended to the pictorial restoration of the inner decoration, joined the engineer Niccolò Niccolai. More specifically, Chini retouched the framing of the apsidal basin which houses a Redemptor between two Angels painted by Professor Bastianini from Siena, and also worked on the wall decoration of the Cappella del Rosario, or Chapel of the Rosary, left of the main chapel, where