The Chianti tramway was a steam-powered tramway that connected Florence with the Chianti towns of San Casciano in Val di Pesa and Greve in Chianti.
It was primarily commissioned by Emanuele Orazio Fenzi, a banker and member of a family with railroad interests, and Sidney Sonnino, a politician representing the Chianti constituency in parliament. Opened in stages beginning in 1890, it had its terminus in Florence in what became Piazza Beccaria, reached San Casciano in Val di Pesa in 1891 and then, in 1893, Greve in Chianti.
It remained in operation for 45 years until 31 July 1935, when the service was discontinued.
History
Background
Before the advent of the tramway, connections between Florence, Chianti and Siena relied on stagecoaches. In Florence, the largest company operating in the sector was the "Diligenze Toscane" owned by Luigi Orcesi, which, from its headquarters on Via Taddea, made regular runs to Milan, Bologna, Rome, Naples, Livorno and Pisa;. other transport companies were that of Luigi Staderini based at Lungarno Acciaiuoli 10, which made runs to Rome and Naples on the San Casciano-Siena-Acquapendente route; that of Giuseppe Mazzarini known as Geppetto,. which from 1845 made runs only as far as Siena; and finally that of Francesco Fineschi, based at Via della Mosca 7/R, which transported people and goods between Florence and Figline Valdarno.. The stagecoach service offered by Mazzarini left Florence at 6 a.m. and did not return until the next day. For Greve, the stagecoach service was called "Procaccia":. it ran only one round-trip service a day, departed from Via del Guanto and was operated by two Greve families, the Danti and the Tirinnanzi, including Giuseppe Tirinnanzi father of the painter Nino Tirinnanzi.
The first projects The Chianti tramway was desired mainly for the political interest of Congressman Sidney Sonnino, who had his constituency in the Florentine Chianti municipalities, and could not remain indifferent to their pressure.. In fact, his constituents had been very disappointed that the Chianti region had been left out of the Central Tuscan railroad, which, after Empoli, followed the Elsa and Staggia valleys, cutting off the Chianti region, and the Florence-Rome railroad, transiting through Arezzo.
The congressman's interests coincided with the aspirations of Florentine banker Emanuele Orazio Fenzi, who had long wanted to build a railway track between Florence and the municipalities of San Casciano in Val di Pesa and Greve in Chianti where he had land holdings.
Discussions about a rail line in Chianti began as early as 30 November 1884, when in the special supplement No. 335 of the newspaper La Nazione, the French engineer Jean Louis Protche, designer of the Porrettana railroad, illustrated a project for a Bologna-Florence-Rome direttissima line,. which in the Bologna-Florence section was very similar to the one later built in 1934, but from Florence to Rome proposed to pass over a route via Siena and Rapolano Terme. In that article Protche stated:
The project met with immediate appreciation in Florence, so much so that, on the following 25 November the Florentine Popular Committee, after approving it, sent it to the provincial deputation of Bologna; the same project was sent to Rome to the Ministry of Public Works, which appreciated it, but at this point there was a rebellion and mobilization of Arezzo. The people of Arezzo came out openly against the Florence-Siena-Rome project and also against the Faentina railroad, then under study, and proposed, against it, a railroad from Arezzo to Forli. The opposition was only partially successful, as it succeeded in sinking the Florence-Siena-Rome line by making the passage through the Valdarno via Arezzo but not the Faentina.Despite the partial success, the Aretines continued the struggle against the Faentina but only succeeded in getting the Central Apennine railway built in the Arezzo-Fossato di Vico section,
The problem of a connection of the capital with the villages located in the Chianti hills remained, so engineer David Duranti, Chief Engineer of the Province of Florence and an ardent proponent of the railway line via Siena, took a step back and sided with the project, much more modest, of a steam-powered tramway line to Greve in Chianti complete with a branch line to San Casciano in Val di Pesa, with, however, the possibility of lengthening the Greve section to Siena and the San Casciano section to Tavarnelle and Barberino Val d'Elsa.
Avenue of the Hills or Carraia Valley
Immediately after the presentation of the project the experts and the population were divided into two factions, those in favor and those against, with the opponents led by architect Giuseppe Poggi who, while considering his masterpiece (the Viale dei Colli) untouchable, declared himself in favor of the tramway as long as it underwent changes.
The clash began on 15 September 1887, when engineer Duranti supported the project in front of the provincial council and won considerable praise for it. A second and fundamental victory was won by the proponents of the tramway on 23 March 1888, when the province of Florence approved the concession for the Chianti tramway. On 15 June that year the province approved a resolution in favor of engineer Giuseppe Lenci's project requested by Mr. Emanuele Orazio Fenzi representing the Ditta Bancaria Emanuele Fenzi & C. of Florence; the project included an outline budget of 1,632,000 lire excluding the cost of rigging and rolling stock, as well as a whole series of works to be built: a new iron bridge in place of the one over the Arno at San Niccolò, a new road between Poggio Imperiale and Due Strade in the Gelsomino valley, the rectification of large sections of the Via Romana with the construction of two new bridges at Rimaggio and Testi, and in addition consolidations were mandatory at the Mulino del Diavolo bridges, the Scopeti bridge, the Falciani bridge, the Casellina and the Sant'Angelo bridge.
Poggi's response came on 7 June 1888, in a leaflet distributed throughout the city and its environs, in which he said:
His counterproposal, presented by engineer Tito Gori, envisioned a horse-drawn tramway along Viale dei Colli while the steam tramway was proposed to pass through the Carraia valley; in essence, the tramway immediately after taking Viale dei Colli would abruptly turn right to pass through Via dei Bastioni, then, for a stretch in its own seat along the Carraia valley, it would enter Viale Galileo and finally, through Viale Torricelli, rejoin the Lenci route. The proponents of this project preferred it because it passed through sparsely populated areas but above all because it did not pass through Viale dei Colli, where the villas of wealthy and influential personalities were located, terrified at the idea of having what they themselves called noisy rabble pass in front of their front doors; their thoughts, moreover, had already been well expressed by the petition submitted by engineer Gori:
Emanuele Fenzi's response was clear:
In a second instance a request was made to move the track from the center of the roadway to one of the side avenues. Other protests came from both the Superintendent of Public Gardens and Promenades Angiolo Pucci, who feared damage to the trees, sidewalks and benches of the avenue, and again from Poggi, who lost the first assault and embraced the environmentalist cause with these words:
But Fenzi had an answer for this supposed problem as well:
Emanuele Orazio Fenzi was a dynamic and persistent opponent who, exploiting Sonnino's influence, succeeded in convincing the Florence City Hall to totally accept his project. Bringing the matter to a close was Minister of Public Works Ubaldino Peruzzi, author of a polite but firm letter addressed to Poggi in which he closed the matter in favor of the original tramway project. Peruzzi wrote, among other things:
Limitations to the operation
The municipality could not forget the demands of the wealthy residents of the Avenue of the Hills and so, in giving approval to the project, it inserted a whole series of regulations and clauses that caused the tramway a difficult and uneconomical operation, but which were probably inspired by an early embryonic concept of protecting the environment, the harmony of places and the privacy of residents.
It was imposed on the tramway to have two terminuses: one at Porta alla Croce and one at Porta Romana; for the latter, studies were made for a possible extension up to the new customs barrier placed in Viale Petrarca (called Barriera di Sant'Orsola) and up to the suspension bridge at the Cascine; the line was to be equipped with telegraph service and later with telephone service, later installed at the behest of the operating company; each wagon was to have a compartment reserved for postal service; along the line progressive distances were to be signaled by signs placed every 500 and 1000 m, and in addition, for the section in its own seat, it was required to have the line guarded by two watchmen who were obliged to live in the localities served; in the section to San Casciano in Val di Pesa it was obligatory to have lifeline tracks, but on this the Ministry of Public Works intervened, which avoided the construction of the same, but imposed a maximum speed of 12 km/h and the obligation of the Hardy automatic continuous brake, so much so that the line was then built for this type of system although no evidence remains that it was actually in use; trains were forbidden to exceed 20 km/h and dual traction was prohibited (given the steep gradients of the track this rule sank any possible development of the service); service schedules had to be divided into winter and summer and be approved by the Prefecture whose opinion was unquestionable; freight trains were obliged to run only at night and in closed wagons, but even this was not enough, as the connection between the Porta alla Croce station and the Campo di Marte station was opposed with numerous bureaucratic loopholes including one that imposed the obligation of only one wagon per convoy, a rule that made the service insufficient and uneconomic; an obligation was imposed to place the tracks in the middle of the roadway of the avenues to allow public walking and transit of the carriages (this rule was enforced even in those curves where for technical needs the track could not remain in the middle of the roadway at further expense to the builder); finally, the municipality reserved the right to grant more authorizations for the use of the line to other concessionaires as well, but at least granted reimbursement for maintenance expenses that remained the responsibility of the builder.
The ministry's grant
The continuous interference and stances of the Florentine elite, which at times bordered on sheer violence, did not stop the project. If the municipality of Florence did everything in its power to hinder the project, quite different was the behavior of the municipalities of Greve in Chianti and San Casciano in Val di Pesa: the San Casciano municipality provided a non-repayable grant of 110,000 liras (later increased to 140,000 liras) for 20 years in favor of the Fenzi company to build the line.
The application to the Ministry of Transportation was submitted on 18 August 1888, and the decree was signed on 18 December 1888, by Minister Giuseppe Saracco. The text of the decree read as follows:
Once the go-ahead was given for the work, the Società Italiana per la Tramvia del Chianti e dei Colli Fiorentini was established in 1889 with headquarters in Piazza della Signoria.
Start of service
The tramway was officially inaugurated on 3 April 1893, but opening to traffic was by individual sections as they were completed. The history of the inaugurations is as follows:
12 March 1890 from Porta Romana to Tavarnuzze (6900 m)