Palaia

The castle of Palaia changed masters as many times as it could bear. Around the year one thousand half of it belonged to the bishops of Lucca, and a parchment of 24 July 1077 records the brothers Ugo and Tegrimo, sons of Azzo, receiving in emphyteusis from bishop Anselm the castle and the pieve of San Gervasio. From 1172 the village found itself in the middle of the war between Lucca and Pisa; then, during the siege of Pisa of 1406, all the castles of the Val d'Era passed to Florence, which shortly after promised Palaia, Capannoli, Peccioli and Lajatico to Giovanni Gambacorti, lord of Pisa. In 1431 Niccolò Piccinino, general of the duke of Milan, took the castle and shut inside it the podestà who answered to the Florentines; the peace of Ferrara of 1433 gave it back to Florence.

Until November 1838 Palaia was the residence of a podestà subject to the royal vicariate of Pontedera. But the thing that really sets it apart comes from a moment when people voted: at the plebiscite of 1860 for the annexation of Tuscany to the kingdom of Sardinia the yes won, as it did everywhere, yet here the share of those who chose instead a separate kingdom was among the highest in the region — one voter in five at Palaia, almost one in three in nearby Peccioli. Of village life the band remains, the philharmonic association named after Giacomo Puccini, which in 2019 celebrated its hundred and fiftieth year. And the landscape remains: among these roads and in the villa of Saletta the Taviani brothers shot La notte di San Lorenzo and Fiorile, and Paolo Virzì his film about Napoleon.