Laterina Pergine Valdarno

This comune was born of a close vote. On 29 and 30 October 2017 the inhabitants of Laterina and Pergine Valdarno were asked whether they wanted to merge, and the yes carried by one thousand six hundred and seventy-eight votes against one thousand four hundred and forty-five: a gap of a few hundred ballots. What tipped the scales were the votes of the hamlet of Ponticino. The regional law of 5 December 2017 established the new comune, which has been operative since the first of January 2018 and is a scattered comune. Arms of its own have not yet been granted to it: for now the town hall uses a quartered shield that holds together the emblems of the two former villages, the gold lion of Laterina facing the trunk of a tree on a six-peaked mount and the red band of Pergine Valdarno with its three little rings.

The territory, however, is old. Between Pieve a Presciano and the sanctuary of Migliari some paved stretches have been found of the Roman road that linked Arezzo to Siena through the valley floor of the Presciano: that road is drawn in the Tabula Peutingeriana and still appears in the statute of the Comune of Arezzo of 1327, where they call it simply the road by which one goes to Siena. On the territory stand the castles of Migliari, Montozzi and Penna, and at Ponticino a Romanesque bridge. There is then another one, the Ponte Romito, about which a hypothesis has been put forward that is worth reporting for what it is: according to a study by the cultural association La Rocca, the landscape seen behind the Mona Lisa would be precisely this one. It is not proven, but it is the kind of thing that makes you want to go and check for yourself.