Sesto Fiorentino

The name is a milestone: Sextus ab urbe lapis, the sixth from Florence on the road to Pistoia and Lucca. That it was a counted road is proved by the neighbouring villages, which are called Quarto, Quinto and Settimello; in the countryside the Roman centuriation can still be seen. Before that came the Etruscans, who drained the plain and left the domed tombs of the Montagnola and the Mula, among the best preserved in Etruria. In the Middle Ages the territory was a fief of the bishops of Florence, and the people of Sesto refused to pay their tolls: they were excommunicated en masse.

In 1735 the marquis Carlo Ginori set up the Doccia manufactory here, one of the first porcelain works in Europe: for almost three centuries Sesto Fiorentino and Ginori have been synonyms, and the Ginori Museum holds one of the most important porcelain collections on the continent. The other calling is working-class: on 5 May 1898 the revolt against the milling tax, begun by the straw-plaiting women who were paid by the piece, ended with the police firing on the crowd — Pratolini tells it in Metello — and from here came the second socialist deputy in the history of Italy. At the foot of Monte Morello, with trams gliding towards Florence in twenty minutes, Sesto is a town both working-class and learned: its case del popolo tell a piece of Tuscan history.