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Tamanti Poderi: The Family’s Lands

The Tamanti were a family of the town, and their wealth was in the land around it. In the Tuscan land survey of about 1820, Tamanti owners appear across a dozen districts of the Montalcino countryside. They held farmhouses and threshing floors, vineyards and olive groves, holm-oak woods, chapels, and a mill with its millrace, as well as houses and gardens inside the walls. This section follows those holdings one landscape at a time.

Open the Tamanti properties map (PDF)
Tamanti properties map. Owner-prepared. Evidence E30. Original online.

Reading the Leopoldine cadastre

The Catasto Generale della Toscana, often called the Leopoldine cadastre, mapped every parcel of land in the Grand Duchy. For Montalcino, the surveyors divided the territory into lettered sections, such as A, G, B′, U′ and V′. Each section has a map of numbered parcels and an owner table, the Tavola indicativa, which records each parcel’s owner and use (a house, a vineyard, woodland and so on). Each owner also had an account in a separate ledger, the Campione, identified by its page (carta) number. Montalcino’s tables survive in three volumes (tomi) at the Archivio di Stato di Siena. The Regione Toscana has put them online through its CASTORE project, and the maps can be viewed in the CASTORE map viewer.

Three cautions apply throughout:

Two Tamanti accounts

The survey records Tamanti land under two separate owners, and the two should not be merged.

Gaetano Tamanti di Francesco (Campione page 1258) was the son of Dr Francesco Tamanti and the brother of Maria Tamanti, who married Clemente Santi in 1819. Brian Pasch’s survey credits him with about 270 hectares: roughly 160 at San Polo, 65 at Montosoli, 26 in countryside section A and 18 at Scarnaquoja, plus three houses with gardens in town. His Scarnaquoja entries include Chiusa, the farm known today as Le Chiuse (section A owner entry; original on CASTORE).

Tavole indicative, Tomo I p.10 — Gaetano di Francesco, section A
Tavole indicative, Tomo I p.10 — Gaetano di Francesco, section A. ASSi, Catasto Generale della Toscana. Evidence E25. Original online.

Ermenegildo and Antonio Tamanti di Filandro (Campione page 1242) were brothers and joint owners. They held land in nine countryside sections and houses in town, including Casa Tamanti (section A owner entry; original on CASTORE). Their largest blocks, at Il Casato, Romitorio and Pelagrilli, have not been totalled. The sections that have been measured already add up to about 171 hectares, so their full holding was probably several hundred hectares.

The holdings, section by section

The table below lists every Tamanti holding found in the survey. The property name links to its page. “T3 p.101” means Tomo III, page 101, on CASTORE.

Property Section Tamanti owner Parcels Features Approx. area Cadastre pages
Chiusa (today Le Chiuse) U′ Scarnaquoja Gaetano di Francesco (ledger 1258) 59–62, 170, 392–397 House at 59 (Chiusa); two houses, threshing floor, vines and olives ~18 ha T3 p.101, T3 p.108, T3 p.123
Scarnaquoja parcels U′ Scarnaquoja Ermenegildo & Antonio di Filandro (ledger 1242) 81–84, 93–98, 270 House, arable, pasture ~19 ha T3 p.102, T3 p.103, T3 p.115
Il Casato A′ Sparampaglia Ermenegildo & Antonio di Filandro (ledger 1242) 70–233: 98 parcels reconstructed at Il Casato (≈120 in the section survey) Farmhouse and stable at 83; mill and millrace, four farmhouses, kiln, vines, pasture Large, not totalled T2 p.82, T2 p.83, T2 p.84, T2 p.85, T2 p.86, T2 p.88, T2 p.89, T2 p.90, T2 p.91, T2 p.93, T2 p.94
San Polo lands G San Polo Gaetano di Francesco (ledger 1258) 14–16, 65–88bis, 103–119, 164–165 Two farmhouses, threshing floor, holm-oak woods, vines and olives ~160 ha T1 p.90, T1 p.93, T1 p.94, T1 p.95, T1 p.96, T1 p.97, T1 p.100
Montosoli lands B′ Montosoli Gaetano di Francesco (ledger 1258) 11–29, 39–44, 49–50 Farmhouse; vines, olives, fruit; parcel 39 re-assigned from Ermenegildo & Antonio ~65 ha T2 p.97, T2 p.98, T2 p.99
Montosoli lands B′ Montosoli Ermenegildo & Antonio di Filandro (ledger 1242) 51–56, 59–61 Arable, pasture, oak wood ~16 ha T2 p.99, T2 p.100
Pelagrilli lands C′ Pelagrilli Ermenegildo & Antonio di Filandro (ledger 1242) 9–149 (≈45 parcels) Farmhouse, hut, vines, pasture Large, not totalled T2 p.110, T2 p.111, T2 p.112, T2 p.113, T2 p.114, T2 p.116, T2 p.117, T2 p.118
Osservanza lands F′ Osservanza Ermenegildo & Antonio di Filandro (ledger 1242) 6, 7, 11, 126, 137, 151–154, 158, 169–170 Chapel, house, threshing floor, vines and olives, chestnut grove ~15 ha T2 p.142, T2 p.143, T2 p.150, T2 p.151, T2 p.152, T2 p.153
Romitorio lands T′ Romitorio Ermenegildo & Antonio di Filandro (ledger 1242) 1–92 (almost the whole section) Two chapels, houses, holm-oak woods Large, not totalled T3 p.90, T3 p.91, T3 p.92, T3 p.93, T3 p.94, T3 p.95, T3 p.96
Castel Giocondo lands D′′ Castel Giocondo Ermenegildo & Antonio di Filandro (ledger 1242) 12–27 Farmhouse and threshing floor, woods, vines and olives ~93 ha T3 p.247, T3 p.248
Abbadia Ardenga lands Z Abbadia Ardenga Ermenegildo & Antonio di Filandro (ledger 1242) 123–125, 140–141 Arable with oaks, pasture, woods ~26 ha T2 p.73, T2 p.74
Town houses V′ Città di Montalcino Gaetano di Francesco (ledger 1258) 229, 308–309, 635–636 Town houses with gardens <0.1 ha T3 p.143, T3 p.148, T3 p.169
Casa Tamanti and town houses V′ Città di Montalcino Ermenegildo & Antonio di Filandro (ledger 1242) 568–571, 602–603, 647–648 Casa Tamanti (courtyard, house, garden, storehouse); other houses, a hut <0.1 ha T3 p.164, T3 p.167, T3 p.170
Farmhouse at parcel 117 (name not recorded) A (countryside) Gaetano di Francesco (ledger 1258) 104–106, 112–120 Farmhouse, gardens, arable, pasture ~26 ha T1 p.10, T1 p.11
Countryside fields A (countryside) Ermenegildo & Antonio di Filandro (ledger 1242) 93, 103 Arable ~1.9 ha T1 p.9

Older names on the same land

Some of these places carried the Tamanti name long before 1820. In 1692 a Sienese fiscal survey listed six Tamanti poderi in the commune: Chiusa, Scannaquoia, Collodini, Gambacci, Pelagrilli and Poggitori (Bonelli Conenna, Il contado senese alla fine del XVII secolo, 1990, pp. 162–166). Five were held by a “Tamanti Dr.”, probably Dr Jacomo Cosimo Tamanti (1649–1710), though this has not been proved. In 1832 the tithe register (decimario) of the parish of SS. Salvatore listed Tamanti holdings at Poggitoia, Magia, Romitorio, Scarnaquoia, Canalicchio, Madonna del Piano and Cappanna. Several of them were marked ora Tamanti, “now Tamanti”, marking a change of owner (Don Antonio Brandi, Studi e Trascrizioni). Matching names do not prove that the land stayed in the same hands. That requires tracing the chain of transfers parcel by parcel.

The Santi and Canali holdings

The same survey records land held by the Santi, the family Maria Tamanti married into. Clemente Santi di Luigi (Campione page 1175) held about 75 hectares, mostly at Fiesole and Osservanza (Osservanza owner entry). His mother, Petronilla Canali ne’ Santi (page 396), held about 230 hectares, including a farm centre with a chapel at Greppo (Greppo owner entry). A Luigi Santi di Clemente (page 1176) held smaller parcels. These were Santi holdings, not Tamanti ones. Maria Tamanti is not named as an owner anywhere in the survey. The Santi land is covered in the Biondi-Santi connection.

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