Siena is full of a thousand things – The ghost town of Poggio ai Frati: the spirits of the friars who atoned for their sins
The village of Poggio ai Frati, near the Villas of Corsano, is of mysteries and legends.
I’ll tell you right away: we don’t know anything for sure about this “ghost village” and it will all be “it is said”, “it is told”. We know that it was an important castle in the range of fortifications present in the Sienese territory and that, in the nineteenth century, it was transformed into peasant and stately homes, which for a certain period belonged to the Marsili family and which was inhabited until 2004.
Observing the tower, with the base in the base, we realize that we are in the presence of one of the many fortresses that were involved in the Siena War of 1554-1555, which also had important repercussions in the area. From the little historical information we have that it was conquered by the imperial troops in July 1554, that the tower was conquered, three prisoners were made and everything that the soldiers found was looted.
Then, the soldiers even set fire to the keep. All this is written by the chronicler Alessandro Sozzini in his “Diary of the things that happened in Siena from 20 July 1550 to 28 June 1555”. And this, perhaps, is the military end of Poggio ai Frati, but the complex is much earlier, probably from the 13th century, already composed of a castle, perhaps with more towers, and a moat; a fairly large community lived there and being in a strategic place it also housed a contingent of soldiers.
And let’s get to the reason for this particular name: Poggio ai Frati seems to have been a “convent” of expiation, not a simple place of prayer, but a place where the most “fearful” religious are “sent”. But can such a place exist without ghosts, spirits and the like as I always tell you? The oral tradition, which goes from age to age, has it that when the castle was suppressed the spirits of the friars did not take it very well and on windy nights (for once no full moon!) They heard howling with anger, or presented themselves as human-shaped clouds or hovering in their transparency of death.
There are those who say that the church organ played alone and those who pass on a man who, not believing these stories, wanted to spend the night to go out, in the morning, with completely white hair for what he had lived, especially the meeting with the hooded monk of whom only the skull could be seen. And then you still wonder why it is called “Poggio ai Frati”?
(ps: for every story linked to oral traditions, true and verified, do not miss the book by Massimo Biliorsi “Magical guide of the lands of Siena”, Siena 2008.
Mauro Martelli
Cover photo – Mirella Bruni