The town of Badia Tedalda, which is also known for its Palio dei Casteli, is in the province of Arezzo at 800 m. a.s.l. of altitude and it has a population of about 1,200 inhabitants. The church of St. Michael the Archangel built by the Camaldolese monks in the XVI century where some pieces of XVI-century earthenware are kept, can be admired in the town.

Benedetto and Santi Buglione, the authors of the precious earthenware Badia's territory is rich in, were the disciples of the famous Della Robbia's ceramics school. The town has seven masterpieces of this kind which were all carried out in the XVI century to order of the Abbot Leonardo Bonafede and Gniognio di Salvatore of Montebotolino.
The five altar pieces, the tabernacle and the "Figure Staccate" they carried out can be admired in various churches of the neighbourhoods. In the church of the chief town, there is the most precious one: the piece altar of the High Altar in the Abbatial Church of Sant' Angelo built in 1516 by Benedetto. The others are kept in the churches of St. Peter (in Fresciano) and of St. Thomas (in Montebotolino).
Badia Tedalda's original nucleus rose in the Roman times as a "mansio" which was strategically set on the way linking Arezzo with Rimini. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the town was included in the Exarchate that gathered the lands directly administered by the Eastern Roman Empire with its capital in Ravenna. In the Middle Ages, two important Benedictine monasteries such as the one of Arduino and the one of the Tedaldi, the "Tedaldi Abbey" that gave life to the town's name.
In the XV century, after a period of harsh fights against the feudal seigniory of the Montedoglio, which controlled the Tedaldi Abbey for about 90 years, the abbey itself lost its privileges and its prestige. In 1489, the village of Badia Tedalda entered the Florentine dominions by adopting Florence's statute. In the first half of the XVI century, pope Leo X, Lorenzo the Magnificent's son, gave the territory to the Carthusian monk Leonardo Bonafede, who rebuilt the decaying abbey and the Buglioni were assigned the first embellishments works.
Yet, Badia Tedalda's status of autonomous "comunitas" is quite recent. It dates to the territorial reorganization of the second half of the XVIII century. More precisely, the Grand Duke Leopoldo I of Lorraine gave it the status of city-state in 1775. Nowadays, Badia is a developed agricultural and tourism centre. Every year in the week following the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, the town attracts a lot of tourists with the historical recalling of the Palio dei Castelli. It is a horse joust in medieval style, where the riders compete for a silver dish and the honour to keep the precious "Drappo" of the Castles of Badia Tedalda for one year.