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Town Houses

The Tamanti drew their income from farms, but they lived in town. Behind the fields and woods on the other pages of this section stood a small group of houses, courtyards and gardens inside Montalcino’s walls, among them Casa Tamanti, the historic complex of which today’s Palazzo Tamanti is a part.

A family of Sant’Egidio

According to Lucia Carle, the family came to Montalcino from Buonconvento in the later 1500s and settled in the Terzo di Sant’Egidio, one of the town’s three historic districts. Their house stood in the Mattonato, today’s via Soccorso Saloni (Carle, La patria locale, 1996, pp. 289–300). By the eighteenth century, local historical material refers to the palazzo of the “Ill.mo Signor Ermenegildo Tamanti”, with a Camera di San Gaetano, a room named for the saint, containing devotional images.

Rubble-stone walls, brick arches and deep openings on the lower level of Palazzo Tamanti
Rubble-stone walls, brick arches and deep openings on the lower level of Palazzo Tamanti. Palazzo Tamanti owner photograph (Brian Pasch). Evidence P01.

Town and country in the cadastre

One point of geography matters for reading the survey. Countryside section A is not the walled town. The town parcels, including every Tamanti house, belong to a separate section, Città di Montalcino, section V′. Its map can be viewed in the CASTORE map viewer (Città di Montalcino, sheet I).

Both Tamanti accounts held property in V′:

Casa Tamanti, parcels 568–571

The most important group is 568–571. Local historian Luisa Scrivani identified these four parcels on an annotated cadastral map she dates to about 1835, when the new Tuscan cadastre came into force. She recorded them as “casa Tamanti”, registered to Ermenegildo and Antonio Tamanti, sons of Filandro (Scrivani, correspondence of 28 August 2026). Her figures are:

The original hearth, bearing MDX (1510) and the later date 1930
The original hearth, bearing MDX (1510) and the later date 1930. Palazzo Tamanti owner photograph (Brian Pasch). Evidence P02.

Together they come to 1,047.88 m²: a house with its own courtyard, a kitchen garden and a storehouse. The corresponding owner-table page is Tomo III p. 164. Its entries for 568–571 are still to be transcribed in full and checked against Scrivani’s reading.

The same brothers owned the Casato estate in the countryside, and the 1841 census lists both as proprietari. It places Antonio, aged 31, in the parish of Sant’Egidio, and Ermenegildo, aged 37, in San Lorenzo in San Pietro. Gaetano, aged 39, also appears in Sant’Egidio (Scrivani, Era il 1841 a Montalcino, 2017).

From Casa Tamanti to today’s Palazzo

Today the historic complex is divided into two portions. One is owned by Brian and Carrie Pasch, who bought it in January 2024. The other belongs to the Feliziani family, Tamanti descendants who hold a larger share of the adjoining land and garden. The historic parcels 568–571 have not yet been matched to today’s cadastral parcel (Foglio 84, Particella 295). A visual resemblance between old and new maps is not proof that the parcels are the same, and the match depends on the deeds and cadastral transfers between about 1835 and the present. What can be said is that about 1835, Casa Tamanti was the town seat of the same Filandro branch whose farms appear across the Tamanti Poderi pages.

Master chamber ceiling: blindfolded Cupid, landscapes and monochrome classical panels
Master chamber ceiling: blindfolded Cupid, landscapes and monochrome classical panels. Palazzo Tamanti owner photograph (Brian Pasch). Evidence P06.

Santi houses in town

The Santi also held town property in V′. Petronilla Canali ne’ Santi had parcels 205–206, 637–638 and 881–882 (Tomo III p. 141, p. 169, p. 185), and Luigi Santi di Clemente had 920–921 and 924 (p. 188). No town house was found in the name of Clemente Santi, Maria Tamanti’s husband. See the Biondi-Santi connection.

Historic circulation and timber doors inside Palazzo Tamanti
Historic circulation and timber doors inside Palazzo Tamanti. Palazzo Tamanti owner photograph (Brian Pasch). Evidence P12.

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