Uzzano

For centuries the comune of Uzzano met in the Palazzo del Capitano, in the borgo of Uzzano Castello, which still houses the municipal historical archive, with documents beginning at the end of the thirteenth century. Then, in 1775, the seat was moved out of Uzzano altogether: it went to Pescia, which is another comune, first to a palace in the Ruga degli Orlandi, then to Palazzo Magnani and from 1916 to Palazzo Matteucci. Only in 1980 did Uzzano have a town hall on its own ground, in the hamlet of Santa Lucia, which is still the seat: that is why the comune is called a scattered one. Meanwhile the territory had changed twice: in 1893 the settlement of Chiesina Uzzanese and the hamlet of Chiesanuova, until then Pescia's, were joined to Uzzano; in 1963 the southern part was detached and became the comune of Chiesina Uzzanese.

The name is uncertain and there are at least three readings: a Roman estate name from Audianus, that is «of Audio», probably a legionary; the Germanic personal name Uzzo; or the Lombard ūzzan, «outside the inhabited place», which is a typical toponym and is found in the Chianti as well. But there is a fourth, which the entry itself calls a paretymology: that Uzzano comes from the Latin urĕre, to burn. Reliable confirmation there is none, except two passages of Giovanni Boccaccio, one in the Decameron and one in the De montibus, about the rio Furicaia, where it is said that at regular intervals the stream threw out fiery pebbles. The belief is thought to have arisen from the rubbing of the stones during the floods. In the west of the comune, at Campugliano, sant'Allucio founded a xenodochium to receive the travellers of the old road between Florence and Lucca, and from the church he founded beside it the institution took the name of Spedale dei Santi Luca ed Ercolano; suppressed in 1785, when it had already been reduced to a farmhouse, it was razed to the ground in 1944 and today only a few ruins remain.