The town of Lastra a Signa is one of the most lively commercial and agricultural centres in the province of Florence and it is specialized in the production of AOCG wines. Moreover, it houses many monuments to visit such as Villa di Bellosguardo, the walls of the ancient Castle of Lastra of the XV century and the Baptistery.

The first settlements in the area of Lastra a Signa date to the Etruscan-Archaic times as the remains of a wide built-up area found between Lastra and Villa of Bellosguardo show. In the Roman times, numerous villages rose along the path that linked the ancient Florentia to Pisa, such as the one of Malmantile and Bracciatica Besides its original nucleus, the development of the village of Lastra started in the Middle Ages when the parish of San Giuliano a Settimo, dating to 742, was born and when the castle and the church of Gangalandi were built in the XI and the XII centuries, respectively.
The Cadolingi, members of the aristocracy of Pisa looking for fortune in the territory of Florence, owned the castle but the Florentines destroyed it in 1107 or more probably Castruccio Castracani's troops razed it to the ground in 1326.
Gangalani is Lastra's ancient name and it was a free city-state in the XIII century, already. The fortification plan of the village was carried out after the above-mentioned devastation performed by Castracani. Yet, the works that also Brunelleschi participated to did not start before the XIV century and finished in 1426 when Castra already played the role of a defence outpost on the way between Pisa and Florence. This time was characterized by the contrast between famine and plague that rage over the countryside of Lastra and the construction of luxury residences on the hills according carried out by Florentine families.
Lastra a Signa's strategic represented another dark chapter in the story of the small town. In 1529, Charles V's imperial troops besieged and conquered the citadel with the aim to cut the supplies going from Pisa to Florence. They pulled its walls down since they had not been conceived to resist to the artillery attacks of the Spanish troops.
The return of the Medici after the fall of the Florentine Republic caused the reorganization of the commercial traffics along the Arno to the benefit of the inhabitants of the area. Stone extraction, wool production and craft produced wealth in Lastra that experienced a period of prosperity during the XVI and the XVII centuries.
Lastra's XIX century was characterized by a further development of trade on the new railway and by the industrialization of straw manufacture, an ancient local craft tradition for the production of hats. An intensification of the agricultural activity linked to the cultivation of corn, olives and vines started, too. With the crisis of 1929 the hats industry closed up definitively.