Santa Croce sull'Arno

The economy of Santa Croce rests on the working and the trade of hides and leather: there are a great many tanneries here, and with them the firms that make the machinery and the chemicals the trade needs, and the hauliers who move the material about. It is not only calfskin: the tanneries of Santa Croce also tan ostrich, alligator, crocodile and python, and every year they take those skins to the international fair of luxury leather goods. That work has changed the town: more than one inhabitant in five is a foreigner, and the two largest groups, the Albanian and the Senegalese, each number over a thousand people.

There are no official documents about Santa Croce until the thirteenth century, when it was a castle that competed with nearby Fucecchio, above all over the management of farming resources. In 1330 it passed under the jurisdiction of Florence and followed Florence's fortunes until 1925, the year the comune was transferred to the province of Pisa. The town hall has changed house three times: from 1331 to 1814 it sat in the old Torre del Leone, in the nineteenth century in the palace of the Menicucci, and today it is in a red brick building of rationalist design. Not far off stands a tower whose name says what it was for, Spartabrighe, the breaker of brawls. And on a roundabout, in brass letters, the town has written the title of a song: it was unveiled in 2017 for Don Backy, who was born here, fifty years after he took L'Immensità to Sanremo.