Modigliana

Modigliana is one of the historic comuni of the Romagna toscana, and until 1923 it belonged to the province of Florence. In 1271 the Guidi counts signed pacts with the community, and that is the birth of the comune; in the spring of 1377 the town freed itself from four centuries of comital rule and passed under Florence. From 1510 it was an independent podesteria, from 1772 the seat of a vicariate; in 1838 Leopold II declared it a noble city and in 1850 it became the seat of its own diocese. In those Tuscan centuries it gave itself its own institutions: in 1660 the literary Accademia degli Incamminati, which still exists; in 1722 the Spedale dei poveri di Cristo; and in 1738 the Monte pio, which together with the one at Premilcuore was the only credit institution of its kind in the whole of the Romagna toscana.

In the church of San Domenico hangs the bell of San Savino, of 1169, held to be the oldest in Romagna. The bridge of San Donato, over the Acerreta, was built by the Casalini in the second half of the 18th century on the ruins of one carried away by the flood of 1640; they call it the Ponte della Signora because a noblewoman of the Casalini is said to have ridden across it every evening at sunset to look over her lands, until the horse slipped and both of them fell. Silvestro Lega was born here, and every September the village dresses in 19th-century clothes and remakes his paintings as tableaux vivants; the gallery that carries his name keeps the portraits he painted of Garibaldi, of Mazzini and of don Giovanni Verità. The Sephardic families Modigliani and Modiano trace their name back to this place.