Vecchiano

On the coat of arms of Vecchiano there is no castle and no lion: there is a white-haired man, seated on stones, with a spade on his shoulder and in his arms a jar from which a jet of water pours; behind him, a tower and hills. It is the iconography of a river god — the overturned vessel pouring out the stream — set upon a peasant with the tool of his trade. And water, here, is what counts: the territory lies between the Serchio and the lake of Massaciuccoli, in the middle of a plain that for centuries was woodland. It was in fact part of the Selva Palatina, an imperial appanage which from Monte Pisano to the coast formed an enormous hunting reserve; the oldest document concerning the town is a statute of Henry IV of 1081 confirming that fief to a Pisan fara, and countess Matilda reconfirmed it shortly afterwards.

The name appears for the first time in 762 as Vecliano, and comes probably from the name of a Roman landowner, a Vetuleius or a Venuleius: the Venuleii were patrons of the Pisan colony, they built the aqueduct of Caldaccoli and the baths of Pisa, and in all likelihood owned the lands between the village of Corliano and Massaciuccoli. In August 1944 the retreating Germans brought massacres and deportations here too; on the seventeenth of November 1974 the comune placed at the sites of the killings a number of stones bearing the names of the dead. The public library is named after Antonio Tabucchi, who was born and grew up at Vecchiano and who gave it a great many books; the name of the town appears in a line of D'Annunzio's Alcyone, and at Vecchiano and Avane some opening sequences of a film by Vittorio De Sica were shot.