Pieve a Nievole in Tuscany

The town of Pieve a Nievole is in the province of Pistoia and it has a population of about 9,000 inhabitants. The church of the saints Peter and Mark boasting the highest bell tower in the Valdinievole can be admired while visiting the town. This modern church was built at the half of the XIX century and it is the replacement of the original parish that left no traces.

This town took its name from the ancient parish of San Pietro a Neure set in the Cassia way. The origins of the town is to be attributed to one of Lucca's first bishops, Frediano, who might have carried out this first building even before the Lombard invasion occurred in 570 a.D, approximately.
Yet, reliable news on the church is more recent and is reported in a document of the XVIII century, now kept in the archiepiscopal archive of Lucca.
This lack of news in the Middle Ages is manly due to the wars that affected the territory of Pieve between the XII and the XV centuries and that obliged the parish priest of San Pietro to move to the safer church of San Michele in Montecatini. Therefore, around the XVI century, the parish got the name of ST. Mark and its emblem is composed of a lion, the symbol of the Evangelist, holding the keys of St. Peter, the keeper of the Paradise Doors, in its mouth.
Only in 1908, the church got the chance to be titled to St. Peter, too. The strongest population increase in the town took place in the XIX century thanks to the rise in agriculture production. Its pivotal position in the routes of commerce further developed with the construction of the railway linking Pistoia to Lucca and Pisa that was started in 1841 and finished in 1853. The community of Pieve had always been under the administration of Montecatini, but and it started to refuse the lead of this thermal city and put forward its need for autonomy with the Unity of Italy.
In 1891, the province of Lucca that administered the Valdinievole until the constitution of the province of Pistoia in 1928 allowed the inhabitants of Pieve to have more representatives in the town council of Montecatini. Yet, the operation that had been led in the hope to tame Pieve's desire of autonomy did not turn out to be effective. The town was officially instituted in 1905 and the XVII-century palace of Casa Porciani became its town hall.