Ponte Buggianese in Tuscany

The town of Ponte Buggianese has a very recent history since the area was affected by paludification during the whole Middle Ages and it was only since the XVI century that the first meaningful settlements were created. Inside this town with 7,000 inhabitants, the Sanctuary of the Madonna del Buon Consiglio and the church of San Michele can be admired.

The first reliable historical source regarding Ponte Buggianese is the account of a pastoral visit to its rural church in 1575. At that time, the town was little more than a village but it was slowly growing because of the progressive recession of the waters of the lake of Fucecchio. The then new arable lands led many farmers in search of fortune to settle in the area and they built churches and hovels here.
In the origins, Buggiano administered Ponte Buggianese but in the XVII century already the need for independence of its inhabitants whose claims multiplied after the half of the XVII century, when the population of the "ancient" village of Ponte reached the number of 3,000. yet, in this period, the social structure of Ponte Buggianese was characterized by the contrast between the wealth of important landowners and the poverty of most of the other inhabitants of Ponte.
At the end of the XVIII century, Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine's "illuminated" reforms ended this situation that the Grand Duke and his policy of economic and social renovation did not tolerate. Among the most concrete actions there was an edict of 1782 settling that every citizen in Ponte had to live in a house and not in rural huts that were not at all different from their animals' stables.
In the XIX century, Ponte was already a village of the plain and its population remarkably exceeded the one of Buggiano, the chief town. The town was a rich, lively centre devoted not only to agricultural activities but also to commercial ones and to craft, while lower classes exploited their closeness to the river Pescaia and to the morass of Fucecchio to earn their living through fishing and hunting. Therefore, the separatist feeling began to rise again and it took the shape of the Unity of Italy in 1860. In 1883, in effect, Ponte Buggianese obtained its autonomy as a town.