Santa Maria a Monte

This town was born to watch. The Castrum Sanctae Mariae ad Montem stood on a hill, and the position served one precise purpose: to see the enemy coming before he arrived. For this it was long disputed among the Tuscan cities, passing from the influence of Lucca to that of Florence and ending up at last in Pisan territory; on the summit, where the fortification stood, there is today an archaeological park still called La Rocca. On its pieve depended the churches of the four villages that later joined to form Castelfranco, the neighbouring town: for a while, in short, this hill was the point from which a stretch of the Valdarno was kept under watch, in the military sense and in the ecclesiastical one alike.

The vocation for looking into the distance has remained, but it has changed direction. In the municipal territory, at Tavolaia, since 1999 an astronomical observatory has been working, owned by the comune and entrusted to an association of enthusiasts named after Isaac Newton, which opens it regularly to the public for observing evenings, lectures and guided visits. In the town, meanwhile, there is Casa Galilei, tied to the name of the Pisan scientist, and Casa Carducci, where the poet is believed to have spent his youth and where his father Michele lived, who was the village doctor here. The rest is agriculture, and an agriculture that has even given the inhabitants their nickname: a potato called Tosca is grown here, every year there is a fried-potato festival, and the people of Santa Maria a Monte are known as the patatai, the potato folk.