The town of Barberino di Mugello in the province of Florence at 270 m. a.s.l. and it has a population of about 10,000 inhabitants.

The history of this town with origins dating to the Medieval feudal age is characterized by its closeness to Florence and by the great fights with which the noble families contended for the territory of the Mugello and its precious resources. Barberino participated to these conflicts. Around 1047, the Cattani of Combiate, lords of these lands, built a castle that took the name of the "Barberino", a man with three beards that was represented in the emblem of the family set on a lintel of the castle. In the XI century, the village of Barberino started to develop around the church of the Ss. Sebastiano and Rocco. Soon, it became an important trade centre benefiting from the protection of the Cattanei and of an important Florentine family, the Capitolo.
In 1313, the Cattani ceded Barberino to the Florentine republic and it entered the countryside of the town, with which relations were not that good. In 1351, the Florentines razed to the ground the castle of the Cattani because they had given shelter and paid host to the Visconti's militia from Milan. In effect, the latter had made of Barberino their starting point for their incursions in the nearby areas. Barberino was fortified at its own time and the Florentines worked to increase its population by guaranteeing tax exemption for ten years to all those people who went to live there.
Yet, with the decay of the castle also an important defensive bastion disappeared and the area around Barberino was the object of bandit incursions in the following days. The rise to power of the Medici who were natives of this place helped the village to recover from its situation and to become a richer and more populated trade centre. Yet, the XVI century was again a period tormented by wars, pillages and occupations, such as the one carried out by Giovanni de' Medici that uselessly enraged the inhabitants of Barberino.
In the years, the town of Barberino experienced a period of growth in the textile, industrial and mining sectors. This happened before the population drop of the postwar period that hit all the rural areas in the Mugello and that caused a 30% population drop between 1920 and 1960 took place. This tendency was reversed in the following years thanks to a period of economic recovery and to the construction of the Del Sole freeway that transformed Mugello into an important and trafficked junction.