Vinci. Church of Santa Croce

The fort of the Alberti di Prato once stood on the site where the present castle is located, which was almost completely razed to the ground in 1107 during the siege of the troops of Matilde di Canossa; in its place another palace, called "Palazzolo", was rebuilt to house the nuncios of the emperors Arrigo VI of Svevia and Otto IV of Brunswick (of which two towers remain, those without battlements, which until 1767-68 had about the double the current height); the area affected by the Castle has always been strategic, so much so that there are documents dating back to 1035 which testify to the presence of an older "palatium"; this building was the nucleus of Castrum Prati, the village that stood upstream of the building which also possessed an ancient parish church (Santa Maria in Castello, which no longer exists). The commission for the construction was given by Frederick II to Riccardo da Lentini, probably starting from 1240. The castle, originally tangent to the second walls (XII century), was partially surrounded by a moat and connected to the Albertian prisons from which definition " of the prisons "the nearby Marian shrine took its name. It has eight towers and has inherent, as for the Castel del Monte, various symbolic aspects, both in the structure and in the portal. Once completed it should have been used as an important garrison of the empire, testifying to the presence of the emperor on the possessions of the north. However, its construction was interrupted around 1250, due to the premature death of the emperor, and the unfinished structure was later used for many other purposes. During the fourteenth century, under the Florentine dominion, the castle was connected to the third circle of walls by a covered corridor called "Corridore del Cassero" (ie: corridor of the castle) or more simply Cassero. In this way the Florentine troops could easily enter the city from outside the walls using a protected passage.

San Gimignano is an Italian town of 7 447 inhabitants in the province of Siena in Tuscany. For the characteristic medieval architecture of its historic center it has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The site of San Gimignano, despite some nineteenth-twentieth-century restorations, is mostly intact in its thirteenth-fourteenth century appearance and is one of the best examples in Europe of urban organization of the municipal age. Granted by Royal Decree of 29 April 1936, San Gimignano boasts the title of city San Gimignano stands on a place certainly inhabited by the Etruscans, at least from the third century BC. The hill was chosen for strategic reasons, being dominant (324 m a.s.l.) over the high Val d'Elsa. On the slopes of Poggio del Comune (624 m a.s.l.) there are the ruins of Castelvecchio, a village from the Lombard period. The first mention dates back to 929. In the Middle Ages the city was located on one of the routes of the Via Francigena, which Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury, traveled between 990 and 994 and which for him represented the 19th stage (Mansio) of his itinerary return from Rome to England. Sigeric named it Sancte Gemiane, also indicating the village as a point of intersection with the road between Pisa and Siena. According to tradition, the name derives from the holy bishop of Modena, who defended the village from the occupation of Attila. The first city walls dates back to 998 and included the hill of Montestaffoli, where there was already a fortress seat of the market owned by the bishop of Volterra, and the poggio della Torre with the bishop's castle.

The tower of Pisa (popularly known as the leaning tower and, in Pisa, the Campanile or the Tower) is the bell tower of the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, in the famous Piazza del Duomo of which it is the most famous monument due to the characteristic slope, symbol of Pisa and among the iconic symbols of Italy. It is a separate bell tower 57 meters high (58.36 meters considering the foundation plan) built over two centuries, between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. With a mass of 14 453 tons, the curved line predominates, with turns of blind arches and six floors of loggias. The slope is due to a subsidence of the underlying land which occurred in the early stages of construction. The inclination of the building measures 3.97 ° with respect to the vertical axis. The tower is managed by the Opera della Primaziale Pisana, a body that manages all the monuments in the Piazza del Duomo in Pisa. It was proposed as one of the seven wonders of the modern world. Work began on 9 August 1173. The foundations were left to rest for a whole year. Some studies attribute the authorship of the project to the Pisan architect Diotisalvi, who was building the baptistery at the same time. The similarities between the two buildings are in fact many, starting with the type of foundations. Others suggest instead Gherardi, while according to Vasari the works were started by Bonanno Pisano. Vasari's thesis was considered valid above all after the discovery in the vicinity of the bell tower of a tombstone with the name of Bonanno, walled up in the atrium of the building; moreover, in the nineteenth century an epigraphic fragment of pink material was always found in the surroundings, probably a cast on which a metal plate was cast, which is placed on the jamb of the building's entrance door. On this fragment we read, upside down: "Pisan citizen named Bonanno". This cast in all probability related to the royal door of the Cathedral, destroyed during the fire of 1595. The first phase of the works was interrupted in the middle of the third floor, due to the subsidence of the land on which the base of the bell tower stands. The softness of the ground, made up of normally consolidated soft clay, is the cause of the slope of the tower and, although to a lesser extent, of all the buildings in the square. The works resumed in 1275 under the guidance of Giovanni di Simone and Giovanni Pisano, adding another three floors to the previous building. In an attempt to straighten the tower, the three additional floors tend to curve away from the slope. The bell tower was completed in the middle of the following century, adding the belfry.

Livorno, Tuscany. The Livorno seafront. The Ligurian sea as seen from Terrazza Mascagni The Livorno seafront is a promenade that winds for several kilometers along the coast of the Ligurian Sea, starting from the port area and ideally ending in the coastal stretch of the Romito.

San Miniato is an Italian municipality in Tuscany. The historic center of the city is located in a strategic position on a hill halfway between Florence and Pisa.

Fucecchio. Corsini Park. The fortified towers. Dominated by the majesty of the "Torre grossa", the park is home to the high "Middle Tower" and the smaller "Pagliaiola".

The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, in the center of the Piazza del Duomo, also known as Piazza dei Miracoli, is the medieval cathedral of Pisa as well as the primatial church. Masterpiece of the Romanesque, in particular of the Pisan Romanesque, it represents the tangible testimony of the prestige and wealth achieved by the maritime republic of Pisa at the moment of its apogee. It was begun in 1063 (1064 according to the Pisan calendar in force at the time) by the architect Buscheto, with the tenth part of the booty of the undertaking of Palermo in Sicily against the Muslims (1063) led by Giovanni Orlandi belonging to the Orlandi family [1] . Different stylistic elements come together: classical, Lombard-Emilian, Byzantine and in particular Islamic, proof of the international presence of Pisan merchants at that time. In that same year the reconstruction of the Basilica of San Marco in Venice was also begun, so it may well be that at the time there was a rivalry between the two maritime republics to create the most beautiful and sumptuous place of worship. The church was erected in an area outside the early medieval walls, to symbolize the power of Pisa which did not need protection. The chosen area was already used in the Lombard period as a necropolis and, already in the early 11th century, an unfinished church was erected which must have been dedicated to Santa Maria. The new large church of Buscheto, in fact, was initially called Santa Maria Maggiore until it was definitively dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta.

The Palio delle Contrade Città di Fucecchio, commonly known as the Palio di Fucecchio, is an event reminiscent of a contest held in Fucecchio around 1200. Originally called Palio della Lancia, it takes place on the penultimate Sunday of May (except for the edition of 2017). The race includes two heats and a final, on horses mounted bareback by jockeys. The last historical edition of which we have news from the local historical archives dates back to June 14, 1863. It was only from the eighties that the carousel came back to life with regularity. The forerunner of the modern Palio was the "Fratres blood donors group", which in 1980 organized a pony race to promote blood donation. From the following year it was decided to organize a real Palio delle Contrade, with horses mounted in saddles. After an initial presence of sixteen districts, the number definitively dropped to the current twelve. From 1987 the saddle was abandoned, and the horses were mounted bareback. Since 1995, the FRATRES blood donors group left the Palio in the hands of the municipal administration, as it has grown a lot compared to how it was born. The event takes place inside the "ex quarry of Andrea" commonly called "La buca" by the locals: a natural racecourse suitable for horse racing. The land of the "hole" has been trodden by the strongest Italian jockeys: from Aceto to Cianchino, from Pesse to Trecciolino passing through other important jockeys such as Massimino II, Il Bufera, Bucefalo, Bastiano up to the youngest promises such as Gingillo, Lo Zedde , Bighino, Sgaibarre, Velvet, Tittia, Vittorio.