Palazzo Palloni stands at the heart of Sorano on late-medieval foundations. The wine cellar still bears the date 1499. In the late eighteenth century, the Palloni family, arriving from northern Tuscany, acquired land beside the Collegiate Church of San Nicola and built the first palazzo in the village to follow the urban bourgeois model — the most prestigious building in the entire community. A marble plaque records that Grand Duke Leopoldo stayed here twice.
Three centuries passed.
In the 1970s, the economic boom was emptying the old centre. Neighbours moved to newer buildings in the new part of the village. Rosa, matriarch and merchant — one of the first women in Sorano to run her own business — refused to leave. She stayed in the palazzo, whose frescoed rooms had long kept their own quiet history.
Rosa left us in 2022. Her son Mario, an architect, had already been living in the palazzo with his family. Her death became the occasion to begin a restoration: to give the building back the dignity it deserves and open it to guests. History and contemporary design, in one of Tuscany's most compelling corners.
