CASTELLO DI MELETO

Like a fairytale, Meleto Castle announces itself in the enchanting Chianti landscape at the end of a pleasant driveway lined with cypresses and junipers, amid sun-kissed fields and vineyards.

A magnificent testimony of history and the industrious presence of man. Today more than ever we are invited to plunge into the peacefulness of the countryside to savour its tastes and perfumes - wine, the odour of cellars and oil-mills, the wood of the furniture, grain, the thousand essences of field and meadow - forgetting time and its frenetic rhythms on the other side of the hills.

Meleto welcomes and embraces the visitor, the tourist, the lover of nature. It's like an oasis, a parallel dimension to be experienced in its rhythms set by habits and customs great and small, millenary, which have given rise to a vast range of products today, all of highest quality, the fruit of research that unites modern technology with the contribution made by deep and ancient traditions.

The imposing bulk of Meleto Castle stands in the heart of Chianti Classico, not far from the boundary between the ancient Republics of Siena and Florence, about 1 Km. from Gaiole in Chianti.

The Castle originally belonged to the Benedictine monks of the Coltibuono Abbey. The name "Meleto in Chianti" appears for the first time in 1269, in the Florentine Guelphs' precious "Libro degli Estimi", as the property of the family of Rainerii de Ricasolis. The Ricasoli family extended and embellished the building over the centuries, and today the Castle still has its massive 15 th century fortifications with an imposing cylindrical tower built as protection against artillery fire. But there is also the aristocratic grace of the villa nobile, with its sequence of furnished and decorated rooms, and an unparalleled 18th century theatre.