Certaldo

Description

In Canto XVI of the Paradiso, Cacciaguida, recalling the ancient Florence, mentions Certaldo alongside Campi and Fegghine (the old form of Figline) as one of the villages from which people descended who later flowed into the city. The notes to the passage read the three names as indicating the three valleys that descend toward Florence, respectively the Val di Bisenzio, the Valdelsa, and the upper Valdarno, almost as vertices of a triangle enclosing the city. According to the same notes, Certaldo, together with Figline, passed under Florentine rule in 1198. The village is thus recalled by Dante not as a place notable in itself, but as a point of origin of populations who, according to Cacciaguida's reproach, would have altered the original purity of Florentine citizenship.