Poppi Castle
The Castle of the Counts of Guidi (Castello dei Conti Guidi):
It rests on a little hillock overlooking the town of Poppi in the valley of Casentino in the Apennines. It is one of many castles that guarded the valley long ago. Others being the castle of San Niccolò, Romena and Porciano.
First written mentions of a castle at Poppi hark back to 1169 when it was owned by the Abbey of San Fidele de Strumi. It is possible though that its history goes back a couple or even three centuries further to the Lombard and Frank invasions. It passed to the Counts of Guidi in the 1190s, who ruled over the Casentino (including the castles of Romena and Porciano).
The importance of the Castle of Poppi reveals itself together with the name of the architect the counts commissioned for some structural alterations, which resulted in the castle that exists today, Arnolfo di Cambio.
Arnolfo di Cambio used the Castle as a prototype for one of the most famous and important buildings in Italy, the Palazzo della Signoria, otherwise known as Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.
The castle changed hands after 250 years under the reign of the Guidi when, in 1440, the Guidi count at the time, Count Francesco dei Guidi, decided to support the Milanese in their attempt to challenge the Republic of Florence to try and expand their rule to Central Italy. This resulted in the Battle of Anghiari, famous due to its depiction by Leonardo da Vinci and the anecdote of the single death* that occurred, not as a result of a loss in combat, but of the clumsiness of the soldier who reportedly fell off his horse. The Milanese lost the battle, the Guidi were exiled from the Casentino and the Castle and Poppi were ruled by Florence until Unification in 1860. Today the castle is the town hall of Poppi.
*There are several theories as to why the Battle of Anghiari supposedly only resulted in on dead soldier. The most plausible is that both the Milanese and the Florentine aristocrats employed mercenaries that out of professional courtesy, instead of offing each other, came to an agreement at a festive banquet with music and dancing after unitedly plundering the region they were supposed to be waging battle in.