Larciano

Larciano is a village that for eight centuries belonged to somebody else. The name comes from the Etruscan Larth, and appears as villa Larsiana in 942 and as Arciano in 1046; the fortress belonged to the Guidi counts and is recorded in 1099. In 1226 the Comune of Pistoia bought the castle with its court, district and jurisdiction for six thousand Pisan lire, and with it the three villae of Cecina, Casi and Collecchio, fields, vines and woods included. It became a cornerstone of Pistoia's defence on the monti di sotto: lost in 1302 right after the surrender of Serravalle, it was bought back in 1310 for ten thousand gold florins. A Florentine podesteria from 1401, then joined to Serravalle and finally to Lamporecchio, it has been an autonomous comune only since 1 July 1897, with the town hall at San Rocco and not in the castle.

On 23 August 1944, at Castelmartini, the territory of Larciano was the scene of the Padule di Fucecchio massacre: thirty-six of the victims were from the comune. In the former cemetery, since 23 August 1996, stands the Giardino della Memoria, where Andrea Dami's work Paysage sets out thirty-six worked tiles, one for each: square and cubic marks for the women, round ones for the men, and no shape the same as another, as the lives were not. In September 2002 the Carrara marble monument by Gino Terreni was unveiled there, with President Ciampi present. On 26 January 2025 two stumbling stones in front of the town hall took the names of Leone Molho and Salomone Mordo, Greek Jewish refugees interned in the village and then deported.