Known around the world as the town of Piaggio, Pontedera is one of Tuscany's industrial engines, and it is so because of a decision taken in 1924: that year Rinaldo Piaggio took over the local engineering works and moved part of his Genoese aircraft business here. The factory grew to the point of building a whole district for its own workers, and it was precisely because of the aircraft that the town was heavily bombed during the Second World War. When the war ended, that aeroplane factory got back on its feet by making motor scooters, and the museum housed in the old workshops tells the rest of the story.
Before the two wheels there were the wars between Pisa and Florence: the castle was destroyed more than once, and in 1369 beneath these walls the Florentines were beaten by the mercenaries of Bernabò Visconti, commanded by the Englishman John Hawkwood, who until shortly before had been fighting for Florence. On the fourth of November 1966, the same day as the Florence flood, the Era broke its banks and drowned the town. Today Pontedera is best seen on foot, because its squares and avenues are full of contemporary sculpture: along viale Risorgimento runs Enrico Baj's Wall, a hundred metres of mosaic by three high, among the largest in Italy, which the artist designed without living to see it finished. The meeting of the Era and the Arno is a short walk away, and Pisa twenty kilometres off.
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📅 Every year, on the second Thursday of October
Pontedera celebrates Saint Faustinus, a 3rd-century martyr, on the second Thursday of October; his relics, translated from Rome in the 17th century, are kept in the town's cathedral, where the patronal feast is celebrated every year.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Pontedera, but an easy day trip away.
