In 1699 the Carletti family were elevated to the first ranks of the Montepulciano nobility through Messer Francesco Xaverio.

Mariotto Carletti, the son of Francesco Xaverio, was decorated with the personal title of Count Palatine by Pontiff Clement XII by virtue of the Papal Brief of 11 December 1733. He and his family were included in the Libro d'oro dei nobili (Golden Book of Nobility) for Montepulciano by decree on18 January 1762.

The coat of arms is sky blue with a gold band and gold six-pointed star at the top and a silver waxing half-moon at the bottom. The place of residence is Montepulciano.

However the most famous member of the Carletti family has to be Count Francesco Saverio who, together with the French Directoire, negotiated and entered into a friendship and neutrality pact between the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and France at the end of the 18th century.

A lover of life, a status seeker and a pleasure seeker; always in the pursuit of important associations such as his friendship with the Countess of Albany or of bestowers of favours such as his friend Vittorio Alfieri.

He saw experienced fame and … and sudden downfall, flight and the loss of a great part of his assets after having dared in excess at the complex gambling tables of European politics at the end of the 18th century.

A true story of the ups and downs of life, Italian life that in many resembles a parable.

At the end of the latter part of the 19th century, on 10 September to be exact, the building passed on to the Nerazzini family by virtue of Cesare Nerazzini's marriage to Egle.

This is where Cesare Nerazzini, incredible doctor and diplomat, spends the latter part of his life. Almost a century after the Carletti family, he entered into negotiations with the Negus on behalf of Italy after the bloody, dramatic battle of Adua in which the Ethiopians defeated the Italians.

In a certain sense the Nerazzini family represented another variant of the Italian character. A fine scholar and an avid traveller, his desire to meet new people and expand his knowledge of distant seas and lands made him the greatest Italian expert on African culture of his day and lead him to terminate his career as Consul General for Italy in Shanghai.

A fairly complex character: as a doctor he was certainly a lover of mankind (in fact he promoted the first attempt to develop some type of health system in areas of Italian interest) while at the same time living with all the errors and contradictions of the colonist period, even if he was one of the few at the time to own a number of lenses with which to look around and judge events.

In 1930 he building was dismembered and the main floor was transformed into an office: first for the Land Improvement Co-Operative for the Chiana Valley (one of the most complex land improvement projects in Italy with a fascinating history and testimonies that range from the Etruscans to the projects of Leonardo da Vinci himself to the great works of the 18th and 19th centuries) and then as the historic head office of the Montepulciano Communist Party.

Maintenance and restoration works began in 2008, revealing frescoes attributable to Pozzo (who worked in Montepulciano and the neighbouring area for an extended period) and to his collaborators in what are now the guest rooms. The frescoes were concealed for decades behind heavy, long-forgotten false ceilings. The 18th century reception room, one of the last remaining examples having such dimensions (10 m x 8 m x 6.2 m in height) with its fully painted and frescoed walls and all the rooms are restored using historical processes and materials that are in line with local tradition.