The name says a lot: Rapolano lies upon frequent and diffused sulfureous-bicarbonate-calcium water springs best known as Spa. The Romans knew the area as they were used to go to Rapolano Terme to relax and even to close important business affairs with v.i.p. of other abroad colonies of the Roman Empire.
Rapolano is fully included in the Crete area, a little beyond the southern border of the Chianti Area, to which it is linked by the River Berardenga and a little norther of Val di Chiana and Val d'Orcia; the village is seated upon a relief in the middle of the valley of the Ombrone river, only 30 km. far from Siena.
It is surrounded by the already well-known hills of Crete, used by Siena farmers as fallow lands. For this reason the Senese people instituted the Grance (sort of granaries - the term comes from a French word).
In the Middle Ages these buildings were of a rural kind and placed within the properties of the abbeys for the guard of agricultural products.
Originally the Senese Grance had the following features: they depended upon S. Maria della Scala Hospital in Siena and were made up of buildings destined to gather the harvestings of a wide estate.
But in the Siena land they have something more specific: they are provided with important fortified structures.

In other words they were built both to allow the preservation of agricultural products and to guard them against the military threats.
The towers, the granaries and the walls were apparatus for the defense. As time went by the destination of soem parts of these defensive structures changed. Inside the small group of buildings laid a courtyard, a place of common access to and from the surrounding rooms with farming functions and the houses.
The village of Serre di Rapolano, upon the hill above (differenced from Rapolano Terme that lies on a lower level just around the spas of San Giovanni and Antica Querciolaia) is a living example of what the Grance were. During the summer the village is switched-off and gives life to a historical commemoration with medieval style dressed inhabitants, markets along the streets of the village and lighted torches hung at the town and houses walls.
An exciseman waits for the visitors and suggests an exchange of the modern money with the ancient one. Drinking at the village’s water source is curious and funny: have you ever drunk a little lightly effervescent water without uncorking