| Ponte a Signa | ||
 | ||
| State | Italy | |
|---|---|---|
| Region | Tuscany | |
| Altitude | 34 m a.s.l. | |
| Name inhabitants | Pontigiani | |
| Prefix tel | 39 055 | |
| POSTAL CODE | 50055 | |
| Time zone | UTC 1 | |
| Patron | Sant'Anna | |
Position
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Ponte a Signa is a fraction of the municipality of Lastra a Signa in the province of Florence.
To know
Ponte a Signa is located along the Arno river and takes its name from the Ponte Nuovo over the Arno that it connects Signa with Lastra a Signa. It developed as a small river port and home to a ferry that allowed the river to be crossed.
Geographical notes
The Borro Fontepatri stream and Colle Alberti and the Borro Rimaggio stream flow into the Arno, marking the border between this hamlet and the municipal capital.
Background
The original core of the village is the parish church of San Martino in Gangalandi, which falls administratively in the perimeter of the Pontigiana district. The history of the parish is also at the origin of the parochial rivalry between Pontigiani and Signesi.
The first sources of the river area come in 1252 when the Cistercians of the Badia a Settimo built a pier to supply some mills in their possession near the bridge, and in 1254 where the monks always bought land, a weir and a port near the Rimaggio from the family. of the Gangalandi, feudal lords of the area.
In the Memoirs of Pescia it tells of a bridge built in 1120 completely of wood. In 1278 it collapsed, and the communication between the right and left banks was interrupted, allowing the parish church of San Martino in Gangalandi to obtain the baptismal font from the archdiocese of Florence, which until that year had not been granted since it was present in the nearby parish church of Signa. The document of the construction of a stone bridge over the Arno comes in 1287, where a seven-arched bridge is depicted on the Signa coat of arms. In 1326 Castruccio Castracani destroyed the bridge after having taken the castle of Signa to prevent the Florentine forces from advancing from Lastra a Signa or from San Martino to Gangalandi crossing Ponte a Signa. It was rebuilt in 1327, then there were restorations in the fifteenth century, eliminating some arches to allow the passage to larger ships and finally the last interventions carried out in 1822.
Initially the economy of the village was based on the trade and production of straw hats by selling and buying in the nearby village Porto di Mezzo.
Around 1360 Filippo Pandolfini bought an old tower guarding the ancient bridge and transformed it into his residence in the countryside. His son Agnolo, a friend of Cosimo the Elder and a fine scholar, hosted Pandolfini at this tower, among others: Leon Battista Alberti (rector of San Martino in Gangalandi between 1432 and 1472), Benedetto da Rovezzano, Pope Eugene IV, Renato D'Angiò and Francesco Sforza. Instead in November 1494 the king of France Charles VIII stopped at Villa Pandolfini when he was preparing to enter Florence. The villa was built in front of the tower at the end of the 15th century (1485-1488), based on a project attributed to Desiderio da Settignano and commissioned by Battista di Pandolfo Pandolfini.
The straw hat industry in Florence was the predominant industrial sector from the beginning of the nineteenth century as in the whole municipality of Lastra a Signa. Although it was not the main one, the Porto di Sotto near the bridge was also a river port used for transporting hats to the port of Livorno from which they then reached the largest airports in the world. Linked to the sector of straw hat production we also find the entrepreneur from the hamlet Pasquale Benini, founder of the homonymous factory, who will subsequently invest in the manufacture and repair of machines and tools for making straw hats, and the potential that the market offers. with regard to second-fusion molten iron objects. Convinced that the sector deserves even more important investments, on 21 January 1842 he founded what has subsequently become the New Pinion, one of the major industrial realities of Florence, with the name of second casting iron foundry outside the Porta S.Frediano at the Pignone
In 1928, in full swing, the construction of the Palazzo dei Sindacati was completed, the headquarters of the fascist trade unions in the area.
On 3 August 1944 the old bridge over the Arno was mined and blown up together with the other bridges in Florence by Germans in retreat. It was then rebuilt further upstream near the old location of the oratory of the Crucifix of Sant'Anna, to allow the passage by car when construction was completed in 1948, and called Ponte Nuovo sull'Arno.
How to orient yourself
Ponte a Signa: full screen map.- Piazza Guido Andrei - Home to the Wednesday market, it includes a green area and a war memorial in the hamlet.
- Piazza del Berti - It opens onto via Livornese at the bridge at the intersection with the state road 325 of Val di Setta and Val di Bisenzio.
- Ponte Nuovo sull'Arno - Connects the municipalities of Signa is Lastra a Signa attested since 1120 and has always been the only bridge of some importance between Florence ed Empoli.
- Footbridge over the Arno - Rebuilt after the destruction of the Ponte Nuovo over the Arno during the Second World War.
How to get
By car
Through the hamlet passes the state road 67 Tosco Romagnola (via Livornese) and, on the Ponte Nuovo, the state road 325 of Val di Setta and Val di Bisenzio (via Ponte Nuovo).
How to get around
What see
- 1 Church of Santa Lucia in Monteorlando (In locality San Martino in Gangalandi). In 1638 the observant Franciscans settled in the convent built by the Florentine scholar Giovanni Maria Cecchi, more than fifty years earlier, at the ancient church of San Michele, located in the place where the ancient Castle of Monte Orlando was located. In the mid-eighteenth century the Franciscans enlarged the convent and built the church, dedicated to Saints Lucia and Michele Arcangelo, which was equipped with elegant Baroque altars. In addition to the seventeenth-century paintings depicting theImmaculate Conception among Saints by Cesare Dandini and i Saints Anthony of Padua, Francesco, Lucia and Catherine of Alexandria by Matteo Rosselli, there were placed paintings by the most important artists of the time including Matteo Bonechi, Pietro Marchesini and Mauro Soderini.
- 2 Parish church of San Martino in Gangalandi (On the hillock of Gangalandi). The League made up of the four peoples who enjoyed special statutes probably met in the church and which later became the Municipality of Gangalandi and then of Lastra a Signa. The first documentary mention dates back to 1108 but perhaps it is from the Carolingian era. Only a few traces of the Romanesque structure of the church remain in the wall structures near the bell tower. The works that most characterize the church date back to the fifteenth century. The small temple of the Baptistery presents in the vault Evangelists and doctors of the Church and in the attic Christ in glory among musician angels, L'Alms of St. Martin and theAnnunciation. The focal point of the church's greatest interest is the apse, closed at the top by a round arch decorated with candelabra motifs and with serena stone pilasters supporting an architrave that bears an inscription in golden capital letters, adorned at both ends. from the arms of the Alberti. Adjacent to the church, in a building consisting of several rooms, there is a small museum of sacred art which preserves sacred furnishings, paintings, vestments and furnishings accompanying San Martino and some churches in the area. The most important object is a painting by Lorenzo Monaco, representing the Madonna of Humility, originally in the Church of San Romolo a Settimo. The museum is the oldest vicarial museum of the Archdiocese of Florence.
- 3 Chapel of the Madonna dei Dini (In the locality of San Martino in Gangalandi, near the parish church). The chapel was built in 1843 on the Gangalandi hill, in a land owned by the Dini family, hence the name. It was built around an old tabernacle dating back to the end of the 16th century, probably incorporating it. The same fresco of the Madonna and Child dating back to the times of the ancient tabernacle, it is in fact still part of the internal decoration of the chapel. Apart from the dimensions and the different style, the chapel of the Madonna dei Dini has an architecture very similar to the church of Santa Maria della Misericordia.
- 4 Church of Sant'Anna. The church has a simple rectangular structure with a single central altar and 3 exits, one (the main one) opposite the altar and the other two opposite each other on the left and right side of the single corridor. A new sacristy was recently built on the right side. The church was built after the ancient oratory of the Crucifix of Sant'Anna, dating back to the 14th-15th century and located on the Lungarno in the current position of the New Bridge, was destroyed in 1944 by bombing during the Second World War. The new church was built in the old square of the bridge, instead blown up by the retreating Germans. It was dedicated to Sant'Anna patron saint of Ponte a Signa. The crucifix now present inside was preserved before 1930 in the parish church of San Martino in Gangalandi.
- 5 Villa Pandolfini. Built at the end of the 15th century. Previously, the Pandolfini family owned the only tower that is currently in front of the gate of the villa. In 1633 Filippo di Pandolfo Pandolfini had considerable modifications carried out: a large terrace on the main front towards the Via Livornese with the underlying service rooms, the chapel, the lemon house and the arrangement of the garden. The consistency of the extension results from the comparison with the plan of the villa designed by Giovanni Vasari Il Giovane, at the end of the sixteenth century, in the period preceding the restoration. Inside, the villa has a nineteenth-century appearance. The large hall facing the loggia has a frescoed ceiling with bucolic and hunting subjects typical of an Arcadian neoclassicism. Nineteenth-century renovations, commissioned by the Ducessois-Prat who arrived in Italy following the French revolution, are also visible in the garden, in particular in the pavilion at Rocaille.
- 6 Pandolfini Tower (A few meters from the old location of the bridge). Born on the basis of an old defensive tower placed in defense of the bridge over the Arno, it was purchased and enlarged by Filippo Pandolfini who wanted to build his own residence in the countryside near Signa, of which the Pandolfini originate. Looking at the entrance door to the internal courtyard, which is accessed through a wall surmounted by a Guelph battlements, we find on the left the original nucleus of the old tower placed in defense of the bridge, while on the right the wing which is probably a desired extension by Pandolfini to create the internal courtyard. On the external façades of the oldest side, Florentine glilies are depicted inside small niches. In the first half of the 16th century, the historic family sold the tower following the construction of Villa Pandolfini right in front of the old residence. In the villa it is certain the presence of the king of France Charles VIII in November 1494, when he was preparing to enter Florence.
- Villa Castelvecchio. Built during the 18th century as a farmhouse, in the middle of agricultural land on the banks of the Arno river, near the small port of the Lastrigiana hamlet. In 1819 it was bought by the entrepreneur Pasquale Benini, the future founder of New Pinion, following the dizzying growth in earnings of the Benini straw hat manufacture and factory, which was its main activity in those years. He then moved to his new residence, which he had enlarged to give it its current appearance, before moving to Florence in the late 1920s. Following the urbanization of the area it has lost its isolated position characteristic of farmhouses.
- 7 Palace of the Trade Unions, Via Spartaco Lavagnini, 6. Seat of the fascist trade unions in the area while now it is the seat of the Recreational and Welfare Society of Ponte a Signa. The interior of the building is very simple: there is a large central hall as high as the whole building and smaller rooms on the right and left on two floors. In the large hall there was a huge mosaic as a floor, visible until the 1960s, then covered by the current floor. The external decorations are inspired by ancient Rome, while the main facade has two bas-reliefs depicting San Martino di Tours and San Giorgio which give the idea of a pagan temple. Under the windows of the facade there are eagles while on the sides of the door there were two large fasces that have been destroyed. Two column bases remain, once surmounted by a pine cone that framed the facade, at the base of which the phrase is engraved Roman Species.
- 8 San Martino Cemetery in Gangalandi, Via S. Martino, 6.
Tue-Sun 8: 30-19: 00. Construction began in 1855, following the ban on burial in the nearby parish church of San Martino in Gangalandi, on a plot of the Gangalandi hill donated by the Venerable Archconfraternity of Mercy of Florence. The design was entrusted to Angiolo Cappiardi who conceived the building with a neo-Gothic character so as to give it a monumental mold. Inaugurated in 1867 it was enlarged in the following years always in different styles relating to the historical period, with a lower part called the municipal cemetery and a new wing in the cemetery of mercy. Currently the cemetery is managed by the Archconfraternity of the Misericordia of Lastra a Signa. - 9 Vicarial Museum of Sacred Art of San Martino in Gangalandi, Via Leon Battista Alberti, 41. 39 055 872 0008. The first vicarial museum of the Diocese of Florence. The museum is mostly made up of paintings, but there are also goldsmith works such as crosses, chalices, reliquaries, chasubles and other objects coming mainly from the parish but also from the Lastrigiano territory.
- Oratory of the Company of the Santissima Annunziata.
- 10 Villa Valdirose (In the locality of San Martino in Gangalandi in Val di Rose). Built in the second half of the 19th century, it was completely renovated in 2007 and now offers the Bed and Brekfast service.
Tue-Sun 8: 30-19: 00. Construction began in 1855, following the ban on burial in the nearby parish church of San Martino in Gangalandi, on a plot of the Gangalandi hill donated by the Venerable Archconfraternity of Mercy of Events and parties
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