It was in 1500 when Jacopo Appiani, Lord of Piombino, gave life to the Borgo di Belvedere, to escape malaria. The Palazzone (the Tuscans use -one for every imposing thing), was the largest and belonged to a single family, the richest, and kept time. The warehouses were on the ground floor, the kitchens and servants on the first floor and the rooms on the top floor.

In recent centuries it was inhabited by a wealthy family that fell into disgrace, and after the war by peasants. Vania used to tell me about the time when lightning struck it and went through the pot on the fire. Then, little by little, its ruin began. A local family bought it in the 1980s. By then it was a ruin, but they built seven flats and a salon. The staircase, structure and exterior walls are all original 16th-century. I fell in love with it and Belvedere's adventure began here.

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