The town of Lari is in the province of Pisa at 135 m. a.s.l. and has a population of about 8000 inhabitants. Besides the Medicean Castle, also the Palazzo dei Vicari, the Loggia del Mercato, built by Cosimo I, and Palazzo Leoli can be visited inside the town.

The local toponym derives from the Etruscan "larix" that means "larch" or from "Lar", the name of one of the gods that protected the roads in the countryside.
The Etruscan presence in the territory was probably linked to the powerful Volterra and it is widely documented by the graves built as small wells of a necropolis dating to the VIII-VII centuries B.C. and by a tombstone dating to some centuries later. The first ones are in San Rufino while the second object can be admired in the Museum of the Castle of Lari.
From the III century B.C. on, the Roman domination established here as it is testified by a statue found in the castle of Lari and by the "latinization" of numerous toponyms. Augusto's soldiers who were deployed in Pisa settled the area and they got some lands to cultivate. After the fall of the empire, the Lombards arrived in the area. They extended their dominion from the Dukedom of Tuscia (Lucca) southwards until Pisa and Volterra at the end of the VI century.
Thus, the territory of Lari was included in the diocese of Lucca. In Charlemagne's period, the civil and ecclesiastic powers coincided and the bishopric of Lucca exercised them both in its dominions. Therefore, numerous parishes and churches with fonts that were the points of reference for the local peoples rose in the surroundings of the modern chief town. In 968 A.D. the first document that has come to our days and that cite the Lari was written.
The slow development of the town aristocracies and of the town autonomy transformed it in a land contended by Lucca and Pisa. The Upezzinghi, a noble family from Lari, supported Pisa but later rebelled against the sea-faring republic. In the XII century, the village underwent the difficult situation of being administered by Pisa even if it remained under the ancient seigniory of the bishopric of Lucca. Once the Upezzinghi were driven away at the end of the XIII century, Pisa created a Captainship of the Lower Hills in Lari.
Besides being a judge, the captain was also the commander of a trained militia and he took orders directly from Pisa. The definitive end of the Hegemony of Lucca in the territory is testified by the fact that the bishop of Pisa bought the castle of the Upezzinghi. Yet, at the end of the XIV century, the defensive structures of Pisa had been weakened by the incursions of outlaws and by the plague and were annexed to the power of Florence.
In 1406, the captainship of Lari was comprised in the Florentine dominion, from which it tried to detach several times, but in the end it was finally included there in the XVI century.
While it was included in the Tuscan Grand Duchy and until its was annexed to the kingdom of Italy in 1860, Lari was the seat of a vast vicariate divided into three town halls and its territory expanded remarkably in 1772. In that year, the territorial reorganization wanted by the Lorraine, who sat on the throne in Tuscany after the extinction of the Medici's dynasty, transformed the town into a "Major Vicariate". Part of its jurisdiction was lost with the suppression of the vicariate itself in 1848.
In 1921, the "Fasci di combattimento" were born in Lari, but, at the same time, also a flourishing clandestine movement developed which gave life to the local freedom committee. In 1944, after a long period of fight with the allies, the partisans of Lario clashed against the Nazi-Fascist invaders many times. The Nazi-Fascists carried out their last slaughter in the day of the town's liberation on 14 July, 1944, by shooting at the crowd and killing thirteen people.