Towards the end of the XVIIth century Paolo Falconieri built this palace for the Marquess Lodovico Incontri on the site of houses belonging to a branch of the Vespucci family. The Incontri were Lords of Acquaviva near Volterra. Antonio fought at Montaperti, was taken prisoner by the Ghibellines, but escaped and joined Charles of Anjou at Naples, who knighted him and gave him the command of 200 horse, when he fought against Manfred and Corradino. On his return to Volterra he volunteered to lead his fellow-citizens against the Pisans and was killed in a skirmish near Pontedera in 1291. Attilio Incontri married the daughter of a courtier of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I. and settled in Florence, and his son Ferdinando was made a Senator and Marquess of Monteverdi and Canneto in 1665; his other son was Lodovico who built the palace which now belongs to the Marquess Piccolelis.

The Vespucci to whom the original houses belonged came from Peretola and took their name from Vespuccio, a wine merchant, who was the first of twenty-five Priors of his house in 1350. Giuliano Vespucci was Gonfalonier of Justice in 1462, and his son Piero commanded the Florentine galleys on the coast of Barbary and of Syria. From him no doubt his young cousin Amerigo, who gave his name to America, heard many seafaring tales. Born in 1451 and brought up by his uncle, a learned Dominican in S. Marco to whom Marsilio Ficino entrusted the revision of his Platonic Theology, Amerigo studied languages, physics and geometry. Admitted to the Platonic Academy he became intimate with Toscanelli, who expounded to him his ideas as to the existence of another hemisphere. Amerigo was manager of the Medici bank at Seville when Columbus made his first discoveries, and entreated King Ferdinand of Spain to take him into his service as chief pilot of another expedition. When the news of his triumphant return after an eighteen month’s voyage reached Florence, the Signoria ordered his house, now incorporated in the hospital of S. Giovanni di Dio, in Borgognissanti, to be illuminated for three nights, an honour rarely accorded by the Commune.