The town of Rignano sull'Arno rises a few kilometres from Florence and it has a population of about 7520 inhabitants. It is possible to visit the wonderful countryside of its territory, which has many agritourisms and wonderful villas and castles.

The rich Florentine families chose the smooth hills of Rignano to build villas and to establish huge farms. These hills had been inhabited since the Roman times. The very name of this place seems to have come from the Latin word "Ariniano". Therefore, the area was characterized by numerous finds of materials, pottery and other tools dating to when the Romans dominated Tuscany.
The ancient documents cited Rignano since 1066 and described it as a village that had developed around the parish of San Leolino. The church, which still exists today with its Romanesque structure, endured several damages in the years due to the Arno floods. It was restored many times and it has a bell tower. Unfortunately, only the base of this tower is the original and it is contemporary to the parish.
Despite Rignano's medieval origins, only towards the end of the XII century the existence of a castle started being documented. It was set near a place called "Casa a Rignano". The remains of a medieval tower and of the walls of the fortress are still visible on the hill overlooking chief town and they are still incorporated in the ancient rural settlement. Anyway, the progressive development of the future town was mostly due to the construction of a bridge over the Arno as settled by the Florentines.
The history of the village and the bridge are characterised by many alluvia and inundations that obliged the inhabitants to build the bridge and their houses many times. We know that these facts occurred four times, at least: in 1422, in 1459, in the XVII century and in the following. Just in the XVIII century, Rignano became a "comunità" with a decree by the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of 1773 after the town had annexed part of the territories of Pontassieve. Its economy mainly relies on the vast countryside around the built-up areas. It was cultivated with the sharecropping system for a long time.