Everyone believes that Seravezza takes its name from the two torrents that meet here, the Serra and the Vezza. Exactly the opposite is true: it is the town that gave its name to the two streams. Seravezza comes from the Lombard place name Sala Vetitia, which meant a centre of trade. The mistake, though, has proved stronger than the evidence: one often sees the name printed as «Serravezza», with two r's, as though the word really did contain the serra. And the coat of arms itself takes the wrong side: according to the reading given by a nineteenth-century heraldist, it shows the local riches — the marble and the waters, with the two torrents running between the rocks to join in a single bed — together with a rose alluding to vezzo, that is to grace: canting arms built on the etymology that is not the true one. Seravezza became a free comune only in 1515, and the marble quarries are still the chief activity of the territory.
The Medici villa, built in 1560 as a summer residence, became the town hall after the unification of Italy and remained so until 1966; today it houses the museum of labour and popular traditions, the library and the historical archive, and in 2013 it entered the UNESCO list together with the other Medici villas and gardens. The war passed through here twice over. Under the German occupation the Jewish family Levi-Bardavid, from Livorno, came to Seravezza looking for refuge: seven people, four of them children; all were arrested on the seventeenth of December 1943 and taken to their deaths at Auschwitz — one of the largest groups of Jews arrested in the province of Lucca. From August 1944 to April 1945 the Gothic Line crossed the comune, which suffered heavy destruction; the Allies liberated it on the fifth of April 1945. At Pozzi, since 1956, eight contrade have run the Palio dei Micci, the donkey race.
Bistecca alla Fiorentina
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Next up: Saint Lawrence and Saint Barbara, patrons of the land of the Palio dei Micci, Tuesday 10 August
Nearest airport: Pisa Galilei, 37 km away
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📅 Every year, on 9 and 10 August, with the traditional bonfire at the Serra-Vezza river confluence
Seravezza celebrates Saint Lawrence and Saint Barbara on 9 and 10 August, with the traditional bonfire at the confluence of the Serra and Vezza rivers. Since 1956, on the first Sunday of May, in the hamlet of Pozzi, the Palio dei Micci donkey race between eight districts is run.
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