Along the Setteponti panoramic road, not far from San Giustino Valdarno, The Borro is one of the quaintest hamlets of the municipality of Loro Ciuffenna and in the whole province of Arezzo.
This place was already populated in Roman times and, during the Middle Ages, it was a fortress and a point of contention between Florence and Arezzo. The fortress was purchased at the half of the 13th century by the Milanese nobleman Borro Borri, high magistrate of Arezzo from 1254 to 1256 and head of the Borro family. With the submission of Arezzo in 1384, the hamlet ended up under Florentine rule.
During the first half of the 17th century, it was given as a fief to the condottiero Alessandro del Borro, one of the old owners, who modernised the fortifications.
The man-at-arms, born in 1600, was one of the most prominent soldiers of the 17th century. With the Habsburgs, he was on the field of the Thirty Years’ War that plagued Europe from 1618 to 1648. The Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici then appointed him as the chief commander of the Tuscanian Army. On the 29th of July 1643, Alessandro del Borro was assigned a march on Borro, which was enlarged with the addition of San Giustino and Castiglion Fibocchi. Nicknamed “terror of Turks”, Alessandro del Borro died in 1656 in Corfu, after being wounded during a battle.
Borro remained a march until the branches of his family became extinguished in the male line and then reverted to the Grand Duchy. After some time the place entered under the rule of some family of the aristocracy such as the Medici Tornaquinci, the Torriani, the Hohenlohe Waldemburg and, in 1903, the Savoy-Aosta. In those times, Borro included in its territory also a farm with 50 fields and extended over around 2500 acres.
In 1993, Duke Amedeo of Savoy-Aosta sold everything to Ferruccio Ferragamo, the son of the founder of the fashion maison “Salvatore Ferragamo”, who gave new life to the hamlet and its mansions, turning Borro into an exclusive haven of fashion and wellness nonetheless respecting its history and traditions.
