Casciana Terme Lari

This comune was not born of any ordinary merger: it is a separation undone. In 1927 certain territories were detached from the comune of Lari to form the comune of Bagni di Casciana — Bagni Casciana, Sant'Ermo, Collemontanino, Ceppato, Parlascio — and on the first of January 2014 those same territories came back together with the one they had been taken from. Not two towns discovering an affinity, but a piece of land that after eighty-seven years recomposes its previous shape. The municipal seat is at Lari, that is in the town that had suffered the detachment. The coat of arms, on the other hand, took its time: the decree of concession is of 2018, four years after the birth of the body.

Those eighty-seven years of separate life, and the preceding centuries of life in distinct villages, have left a disproportionate inventory. In a comune of a little over twelve thousand inhabitants there are three theatres — at Lari, at Casciana Terme and at Casciana Alta — and two public libraries; there are a communal archive and no fewer than seven parish archives, one for each of the historic parishes; there are four castles, among them that of the Vicars at Lari, which today houses a museum, and the walls of Lari; and there are more than thirty parish churches, minor churches, oratories and chapels scattered through the hamlets. Every village went on keeping its own, and the merger put the papers back together without touching the furniture.