Calcinaia

Until the first half of the sixteenth century the Arno came down below Montecchio and then bent away towards Bientina, leaving Calcinaia on its left bank; it then made a second wide loop around the castle of Vicopisano and went on towards Pisa. In 1555 Cosimo the first had hydraulic works carried out here to control the floods, following studies of maps drawn by Leonardo da Vinci; and in 1560 he had the river straightened outright. The operation is known in the sources as the Taglio di Calcinaia, the cut of Calcinaia, and from 1561 the Arno took the southern course it still has. The village stayed where it was: it was the river that changed side.

The oldest name was Vicus Vitri. Local historians tried to explain that vitri with workshops making glazed pots, or with a Roman named Vitrius; but the source judges both guesses improbable and prefers to see in it a corruption of veteri, old — the old Vico, so called to distinguish it from the other Vico close by, which is Vicopisano and was founded later. The present name is attested from 1193 and comes from the lime kilns; and the coat of arms carries two clams, water and sand and therefore the sea, perhaps in memory of the first settlers, who probably came up the Arno. Here in 1136 was born, to a humble family, Ubaldesca Taccini, who became a nun at Pisa and is the patron saint of the town; here in 1138 pope Innocent the second met the emperor Lothair the second; and in 1768 the Coccapani kiln was built for glazed ceramics, which today houses the ceramics museum. On the last Sunday of May the three quarters — Montecchio, La Nave and Oltrarno — race each other on the Arno with their navicelli, as they have done since the middle of the eighteen hundreds.