Borgo San Lorenzo is a medieval town with 16000 inhabitants and it is the biggest centre in the Mugello. The Palazzo Pretorio, rebuilt in 1935, the X-century Parish of San Lorenzo and the Oratory of the Santissimo Crocifisso dei Miracoli can be visited in this town.

The village took its name from the Parish of San Lorenzo around which it developed during the Middle Ages. The church was originally built in the X century, around the year 941, but it was reconstructed between the XIV and the XV centuries. The bell tower, instead, dates to 1263. Numerous XIV-century paintings, the frescoes by Galileo Chini and one "Madonna con Bambino", which is the only Giotto's painting present in the Mugello's territory today, are kept inside the building.
Borgo San Lorenzo, that had established itself as a city-state originally, fell under the domination of the Medici in 1290. At the half of the XIV century, this town was fortified with a wall and only its two gates remained. In the same period, the rulers of Florence built the villa of Poggio Reale that overlooked Borgo San Lorenzo and that currently houses the "Museo della Vite e del Vino", with a collection of XVIII-century glasses.
In the XVIII century, the Oratory of the Santissimo Crocifisso dei Miracoli was born with the aim to preserve a XIV-century wooden crucifix, probably painted by Giovanni Pisano and bequeathed to this town by the Compagnia de' Battuti, a group of German pilgrim fathers who hastily abandoned the town frightened by the plague. Numerous miracles were attributed to the crucifix. Among them, there was the end of the terrible XV-century plague.
This sacred object earned the worship of the citizens, who also attributed to it the little damage caused by the 1542 earthquake to Borgo San Lorenzo and the end of the French occupation in 1799. Instead, another earthquake occurred in 1919 and it deeply damaged the town, although the most spoiled places have been rebuilt.