Vaiano in Tuscany

The town of Vaiano is in a hollow of the Prato territory surrounded by greenery and it has a population of about 9500 inhabitants. It is possible to admire the abbey of San Salvatore and its Museum of the Abbey of San Salvatore by visiting the town. Vaiano, that had always been within the administration of Prato, got its autonomy as a town only in 1949.

Some groups of farmers settled the plain around the chief town in the Roman times, but the central nucleus of the modern town developed only around the X century A.D. around the Abbey of San Salvatore. The importance of the monastery, that goes beyond the spiritual sphere, caused a remarkable development of the agriculture economy and of the exploitation of the woods. Around the XII century, Vaiano became one of the centres administered by Prato set at the border with the feud of the counts Alberti.
During the centuries, the citizens, who were worried about the closeness to this powerful family, provided the village with more and more remarkable fortifications that excluded the monastery.
In the Middle Ages, the economy based on the exploitation of the water power of the river Bisenzio started to flourish and mills, paper mills, fulling-mills and foundries, the illustrious forerunners of the modern textile industry grown in the XIX century, rose along the banks of the river.
In 1944, Vaiano suffered the damages and the destruction operated by the Nazi-Fascist occupation troops. Few of its buildings survived to the devastation. Besides the Abbey, a building with a XVIII-century structure and the house Bardazzi, namely the residence that lodged Giuseppe Garibaldi at the time of its exile from the Romagna region in 1849, are still kept.