Piteglio in Tuscany

Piteglio is the second town in the province of Pistoia in territorial extension. It was the union of five little autonomous towns until the XVIII century. It is set at an altitude of 698 m. a.s.l. and it has a population of about 1,800 inhabitants. The church of San Bartolomeo in Lancile and the church of San Miniato a Calamecca can be admired here.

The foundation of Piteglio dates to one of the Liguri's military garrison that had been born to tame the pressure of the Romans who had settled here in the XII century, only. Documents testify the presence of a fortress only since the XII century. Numerous imperial diplomas (such as the ones issued by Henry VI in 1191 and by Frederick II in 1220 and in 1247) reiterated the property of the castles of Piteglio and of Popiglio to the Counts Guidi.
Around the XIII century, Piteglio and the nearby villages issued their autonomous statutes and they went under the aegis of Pistoia in the wake of the birth of the free city-state of Pistoia.
In the second half of the century, the new town was included in the Captainship of the Alta Montagna and thus it was involved in the centuries-old fight between the Panciatichi and the Cancellieri. This dispute only ended in 1539 when the territory of Pistoia was already part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Cosimo I de' Medici could pacify the area by defining the borders with Lucca's dominions (1538).
A group of little autonomous towns characterized the local system that the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine reorganized in 1774. Its reform aimed at uniting the towns of Calamecca, Crespole, Lanciole, Piteglio and Popiglio in only one administration where Piteglio was the chief town, except the Napoleonic parenthesis at the beginning of the XIX century where it was Popiglio to become the municipal seat. The Gothic line, along which the Nazi-Fascists and the allies' army fought, crossed the town's territory in 1944.