Santa Maria a Monte | Carducci House Museum

The Carducci House Museum is hosted in the house in which the poet’s family lived when Michele, father of the poet Giosuè Carducci (Italian Nobel Prize)  was granted the town’s medical licence in 1856. Here Michele, Ildegonda Celli and their sons Dante and Valfredo, lived from 1856 to 1859, while Giosuè held the professorship at the San Miniato high school.

Evidence of this stay on the “flowery Tosca hill” (as the poet defined Santa Maria a Monte in his verses), can be found in the correspondence between the family and the Town Hall, kept in the Historical Archive. Here the Carducci family tragedy took place: it is said that Michele, during one of the frequent quarrels, struck his son Dante with a scalpel, killing him on 4th November 1857. Dante was made to look like a suicide, while Michele died a few months later, supporting the theory of murder. Both are buried in the old cemetery, today’s Literary Park at Campo della Rimembranza.

Since 2007 the house has housed the “Tenero Gigante” collection of artist Antonio Possenti, who has dedicated his paintings to his poems .

Virtual Tour

In front of Casa Carducci is the Municipal Library, under which there is access to a medieval cistern from the 13th century. From a semicircular opening you can see the water deposit created by the water table: an essential good that was never to be lacking to supply the castle in times of peace and in case of siege. The tufa cistern is flanked by an underground tunnel, now sealed off, which served as a secret military passageway for the castle defenders.