Palazzo Tamanti takes its name from a family that lived in Montalcino for more than three centuries. They were landowners, doctors and lawyers, and at times they held public office. Their name turns up in parish registers, tax tables, cadastral ledgers and civil records, and in the early history of Brunello. This section brings that record together. It starts with the house and follows the family outward, to the farms they owned and to the families they married into.
The story rests on research by the palazzo’s present owner, gathered in a storybook of 756 pages, in English and Italian, that is updated as new records are found (version 3.74, 3 November 2026, now with the Paccagnini traced back to the master builder of 1749, Hilda Padelletti’s funeral of 1915 and Carlo Padelletti in the Waldensian Synod, and a part on families connected to the Tamanti: the Menchini, the Padelletti, the Begni, the Ducci of Subbiano, the Brigidi, the Fineschi, Faenzi and Saloni, the Paccagnini, builders of the cathedral bell tower, and the Costanti, whose family tree is now joined in the registers from Crescenzio Costanti to Colle al Matrichese; a closing part on fourteen women of the Tamanti story; Maria Giuliani Tamanti’s parents, the magistrate Giuseppe Giuliani and Ezzelina Allegretti, and the Giuliani of San Casciano dei Bagni; thirteen chapters on the Tamanti estates, among them San Polo and San Polino; the war hero Soccorso Saloni, whose name the palazzo’s street carries; and new stories of Montalcino’s builders, an architect in Rome and an early Brunello prize). That work began with the published genealogy in Lucia Carle’s study of Montalcinese identity (Carle, La patria locale, 1996, pp. 289–300). It then set Carle’s tree against original documents: baptism indexes, Napoleonic and Restoration civil registers, and the Leopoldine cadastre of about 1820. Where the records confirm Carle, these pages say so. Where they correct her, the correction is given with its source. Where a question is still open, we say that too.
A family from Buonconvento
The earliest Tamanti on record is Bartolommeo di Francesco Tamanti, one of the four men who compiled the statutes of Buonconvento, approved by its council on 6 July 1522. Carle’s genealogy begins with Cristofano of Buonconvento, called “Il Tempesta”, son of Oriente, who died in 1590. In the 1560s and 1570s several Tamanti households came up the road from Buonconvento to Montalcino, and by the seventeenth century Cristofano’s descendants were settled in the Terzo di Sant’Egidio. Read the Buonconvento story. A fiscal survey of 1692 already lists six farms under the Tamanti name (Bonelli Conenna, Il contado senese alla fine del XVII secolo, 1990, pp. 162–166). In the later eighteenth century Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo noted Montalcino’s “case migliori”, its better houses, and Tamanti was the first name on his list (Ascheri, “Montalcino nella storia”, p. 37).
The palazzo
The house is older than the family’s secure presence in town. An old hearth carries the date MDX (1510) beside a later 1930. Above the entrance is a carved shield showing an anchor and three stars, the Tamanti arms. The same emblem appears inside the sanctuary of the Madonna del Soccorso, where Dr Jacomo Tamanti and his wife Anna Menchini gave the right altar in 1699. Around 1835 the cadastre registered a town complex of courtyard, house, garden and storehouse, parcels 568–571, to the brothers Ermenegildo and Antonio Tamanti, sons of Filandro (Tavole indicative, Città di Montalcino, Tomo III p. 164). The owner identifies parcel 569 with the footprint of the whole palazzo, which was later divided. Today it is shared between two households, and one of them descends from the Tamanti.
Five threads
The family history divides naturally into five threads. Each one has its own section.
The family leaders
Ten members of the family have a page of their own: Dr Jacomo Cosimo, the doctor who gave the altar at the Madonna del Soccorso; Gaetano, who wanted to leave his fortune to the town; Maria Tamanti Santi, ancestress of the Biondi Santi; Anna Tamanti Ducci, who went to law for her rights; Dr Antonio, founder of the Siena–Empoli railway; Francesco Antonio, gentleman farmer and councillor; Maria Giuliani, champion of war orphans; Avv. Giuseppe, deputy mayor and justice of the peace; and the two engineers who fell in the world wars, Giovanni and Gianni. Meet the Tamanti family leaders.
The family tree
This thread traces the line from Il Tempesta through Dr Jacomo Cosimo and Ermenegildo Gaetano to Filandro and his sons. It then follows the line through the nineteenth century to two soldiers of the twentieth, Giovanni and Gianni Tamanti, whose memorial is on the facade. Explore the Tamanti family tree.
Biondi-Santi
On 12 February 1819 Maria Tamanti, daughter of Dr Francesco Tamanti and Appollonia Bardi, married Clemente Santi (marriage act of 12 February 1819). In 1844 their daughter Caterina married Jacopo Biondi (marriage entry of 22 January 1844). Their son Ferruccio became the winegrower remembered as Ferruccio Biondi Santi. Carle’s tree has the two surnames the wrong way round; the civil records put them right. Read the Biondi-Santi story.
The Colombini connection
In the twentieth century Giuliana Tamanti married Giovanni Colombini. The marriage links the family to Fattoria dei Barbi and to the Casato estate. In 1820 the cadastre already recorded Casato as a 98-parcel holding of Filandro’s sons. Read about the Colombini connection.
The Tamanti poderi
The family’s wealth lay in its land as much as in its town house. Their farms included Chiusa, Scarnaquoja, Pelagrilli and Il Casato, worked under the Tuscan mezzadria, or sharecropping, system. Some can be followed from the fiscal tables of 1692 to the cadastral ledgers of about 1820 (Tavole indicative, section A). Walk the Tamanti poderi.
Montalcino winery origin stories
Nine of today’s Brunello estates stand on farms the Tamanti once held: Le Chiuse, Casato Prime Donne, Castello Romitorio, Siro Pacenti, Lambardi (Canalicchio di Sotto), Capanna, Valdicava, Villa Poggio Salvi and CastelGiocondo. Each has its own page, following the land from the Tamanti to the family that makes wine there now. Two more, the San Polo and San Polino estates, stand on Gaetano Tamanti’s hill farms toward Castelnuovo dell’Abate. Read the winery origin stories.
Important connected families
Seven families lived beside the Tamanti for two centuries and more, and each has its own page (all of them are listed on Connected Families).
- The Menchini of Montalcino. The house of Dr. Jacomo’s wife Anna, whose heirs the Tamanti became: a theologian at the emperor’s court, physicians, and a richly furnished house on the Mattonato in 1708.
- The Padelletti of Montalcino. Neighbors, in-laws and wine makers: Cav. Enrico Padelletti the mayor and his wife Silvia Paccagnini, a jurist who married in Berlin, and Hilda Zumpt’s electric works; and, on a page of its own, the Colombini connection, Giuliana Tamanti’s marriage into the Colombini.
- The Begni of Montalcino. The family the Tamanti married most often: a hospital rector, an archdeacon who refused a bishopric, the town’s largest library, and an altar that still carries their arms.
- The Ducci of Subbiano. Anna Tamanti’s family in the Casentino: a marriage of 1809, a widow who took her own son to court, and two notaries named Dario.
- The Brigidi of Montalcino. Tullio Scrivani’s family of doctors, lawyers and men of letters, from the Tuscan Parliament of 1848 to the farm of the Osticcio.
- The Fineschi, the Faenzi and the Saloni. Franci Scrivani’s bakers, shoemaker and carrier from Buonconvento, and Soccorso Saloni, whose name the palazzo’s street carries.
- The Paccagnini of Montalcino. The builders who roofed San Francesco in 1749 and raised the cathedral bell tower, an architect prized in Rome, and Riccardo Paccagnini’s Grand Prix for Brunello at Bordeaux in 1904; kin to both the Brigidi and the Padelletti.
The women who carried the land, the house and the name from one family to the next are gathered on one page: The Women of the Tamanti Story.
Montalcino, Brunello and a visitor’s guide
Four further pages set the family inside the history of the town and its wine.
- The Last Republic: Montalcino 1553–1559. Montalcino survived a siege and became the last home of the free Republic of Siena, and its banner still marches at every Palio.
- The Fortune That Came Too Late. The town emptied, Brunello made it rich, and the Tamanti had already sold their land. This page also follows the neighbours who stayed.
- Other Stories of Montalcino. The builders who roofed San Francesco and raised the cathedral’s bell tower, a Montalcino architect prized in Rome, an early Grand Prix for Brunello, and the scholar who saved the town’s own words.
- Walking the Tamanti’s Montalcino. A nine-stop town walk, a wine road to the estates on former Tamanti land, and the town’s year of archers, thrushes and the Palio.
How we treat the evidence
Every page in this section links its claims to the record behind them. Most are original scans hosted here, with links to the originals on the Italian state archives portal Antenati or on the Tuscan cadastral archive CASTORE. Published books are cited by author, title and page. Some identifications are strong but not yet proven, such as a name that matches in age and place but lacks a confirming act. Those are labelled as such. See the full sources and evidence.
Sources on this page
- Lucia Carle, La patria locale. L’identità dei Montalcinesi dal XVI al XX secolo (Regione Toscana / Marsilio, 1996), pp. 289–300
- Lucia Bonelli Conenna, Il contado senese alla fine del XVII secolo (Siena, 1990), pp. 162–166
- Mario Ascheri, “Montalcino nella storia: alle sorgenti del Brunello”, p. 37
- Don Antonio Brandi, Studi e Trascrizioni (1699 Madonna del Soccorso altar inscription)
- ASSi, Catasto Generale della Toscana, Montalcino, Tavole indicative, Tomo III p. 164 (Città di Montalcino, section V′); parcel identification by Luisa Scrivani (correspondence, 28 August 2026)
- Tavole indicative, Tomo I p. 9, section A: Ermenegildo and Antonio di Filandro (original on CASTORE)
- Reconstruction of Tamanti parcels at Il Casato (Sparampaglia), owner reconstruction from CASTORE
- Marriage of Clemente Santi and Maria Tamanti, 12 February 1819, S. Egidio, act 8 (original on Antenati)
- Marriage of Jacopo Biondi and Caterina Santi, 22 January 1844 (original on Antenati)