The Fattoria di Caiano estate is formed by a group of buildings established around an old farm house which stood close to the old road connecting the Sieve valley with the region of Casentino passing by the base of the Falterona mountain. The Gori family owned those buildings and the surrounding land since the middle of the 18th. Century. The various members of the family combined their professional work in Florence with the development of their properties considering them not only as an investment.
Their aim was to improve the traditional agricultural techniques of the peasants working hard in the stony and mountainous environments, in order to lift their income to the level of the peasants’ families of the lower plains.
The Gori were professional people mostly lawyers, architects and medical doctors and through their involvement both in their professions and in agriculture were a valid example of the Tuscan middle class, educated and active, that promoted the liberal and nationalistic ideals. In many instances they took part in the Wars of Independence . A few medals and encomiums prove their value on the battle fields.
The ones who were mostly active were Camillo, officer of the Red Shirts under Giuseppe Garibaldi, Tito, architect acting in Florence in the years when Florence was capital of Italy ( end of ‘800), and their nephew Agostino, lawyer and historian, whose most famous work “Gli Albori del Socialismo” is still asked for by historians specializing in that subject. The present family library was started by him. The old garden was planted in the twenties.
Almost with the aim to mitigate the seriousness of the cultural and public commitment of his life, Agostino used to invite the strolling theatre players to perform in the small theatre he had built on the first floor of the Fattoria.
A chain of generations, with divers intellectual interests but with the constant plan to strengthen and maintain the property: this continuity has created the special atmosphere that permeates the place.
Right after the end of the Second World War the change of the general economic and social conditions caused the disappearance of the traditional “mezzadria ”system forcing the owners to change their strategy due to the reduction of availability and to the increasing cost of labor.
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