Castiglion Fiorentino

In the tenth century it was called simply Castiglione. It became a free comune in the twelfth, and from then on it changed masters so often that its name changed with them. After the Aretine defeat at Campaldino, in 1289, it passed to Florence; in 1303 the troops of Arezzo and Siena led by Uguccione della Faggiuola took it back, and it became Castiglion Aretino; in 1336 it was ceded to Florence again, and in 1344 the Perugians stormed it and it became Castiglion Perugino. In 1369, after the black death, the people rose against Perugia and placed themselves under the protection of the Papal State; and from 1384 the town passed for good to Florence, which gave it the name it still bears. Three surnames in eighty years, one for each master.

The valley below the town, on the other hand, was flooded by Rome. In Etruscan times the Valdichiana was crossed by the river Clanis, which ran the opposite way to today's canal and was a navigable waterway; the fields were rich enough that, Livy relates, they supplied Scipio's expedition with grain. Then, under Augustus, the Clanis was held responsible for the floods of the Tiber at Rome — it fed the Paglia, and the Paglia the Tiber — and the Romans blocked its mouth: the waters stagnated and the valley turned to marsh. It stayed unhealthy ground for centuries, so much so that Dante used the hospitals of the Valdichiana between July and September as an image of suffering, and the town on its height probably grew because up there one was safe from malaria. The reclamations came much later, and the last works are of the twentieth century. Under the Piazzale del Cassero the excavations have found an Etruscan city wall, and under the church of Sant'Angelo an Etruscan temple.