San Martino in Gangalandi | ||
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State | Italy | |
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Region | Tuscany | |
Altitude | 121 m a.s.l. | |
Prefix tel | 39 055 | |
POSTAL CODE | 50055 | |
Time zone | UTC 1 | |
Position
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San Martino in Gangalandi is a locality of the municipality of Lastra a Signa in the province of Florence.
To know
Geographical notes
The locality, built on the Gangalandi hillock, is crossed by the Borro Fontepatri streams and the Alberti and Borro Rimaggio hills, which mark the border with the locality of Calcinaia. Both streams flow into the Arno in the hamlet of Ponte a Signa.
Background
Initially the village was under the control of the Cadolingi of Fucecchio, and developed around the 12th century parish church of San Martino a Gangalandi, from which it takes its name.
In the 11th century there was the castle of Monte Orlando, the domain of the Pisan family of the Orlandi first and then of the Gangalandi. The castle defended the trade route on the Arno river, thanks to its good strategic position, but was destroyed in 1107 following the expansion of Florence.
The first documentary mention of the parish dates back to 1108: in it the noble Bernardo Adimari donated land to the proposed San Martino whose entrances allowed the maintenance of the church, formerly the seat of a college of canons. This suggests that the church is older and dates back to previous centuries, perhaps to the Carolingian period, as evidenced by the dedication to San Martino di Tours, and the patronage of the Adimari family, of Frankish origin. In the same year the Adimari family donated some possessions in the area to Florence.
Subsequently to the Cadolingi the control of the area passed to the Ghibelline family of the Gangalandi, which was linked to the now extinct Cadolingi counts. The Gangalandi were honored by the Margrave of Tuscany, of the title of knight, according to the legend of Hugh of Tuscia. In 1260, following the victory of the Ghibellines in the battle of Montaperti, there are documents from the Municipality of Gangalandi.
The parish church of San Martino was nicknamed "San Martinone" by the people of Gangalandi. Despite the fact that up until the early 1900s, what was at the time church of San Martino was jurisdictionally suffragian of the nearby parish church of San Giovanni Battista a Signa, the location of San Martino on the main road towards Pisa, which in fact cut off Signa, allowed it to be the religious reference point for the peoples of this area of the Oltrarno. In fact, it obtained an importance equal to the parish church of Signa from the religious point of view, even if on paper it was still subject, if not exceeding the parish itself as regards the wealth of the parish for the tithes collected and the trade of its people. Thus a strong rivalry was born between the parish priest of Signa and the priest of San Martino. Over the centuries these frictions were not appeased, with San Martino also claiming the title of parish church, relying on his greatness, so as to be able to definitively free himself from the clericals of Signesi. It even reached the point several times that the parish priest of San Giovanni threatened the excommunication through papers and lawsuits of the parish priest of Gangalandi, and around 1210 it even happened that the prior of San Martino found himself seriously excommunicated. In 1278 it was the episode of the collapse of the Bridge over the Arno that was the pretext, as communication between the right and left banks of the river was interrupted, to obtain in the church of San Martino the baptismal font from the archdiocese of Florence, which until that year it had not been granted because it was present in the nearby parish church of Signa. Despite the baptismal font, a prerogative and characteristic element in the teroia only of the parish churches, which made San Martino the baptismal church of that bank of the Arno, the priory of San Martino was only recognized as a proposition in 1745, and not as a parish before of 1926. It is precisely from these parochial motifs that the hatred and rivalry between signesi is pavers: in particular between signesi and Pontigiani, which in the past centuries were called gangalandini.
In 1432 Leon Battista Alberti became prior of the parish and controlled the territory of the municipality for many years. He personally intervened with a vast architectural project to transform the old Romanesque parish church according to the canons of the new and flourishing Renaissance culture.
In 1446, Agnolo Pandolfini, a friend of Leon Battista Alberti, was buried in the parish church, but in 1885, with the prohibition of burying bodies in the church, construction began on the cemetery of San Martino in Gangalandi.
San Martino a Gangalandi was the first village to be built in the Lastrigiano territory, and was a municipality until 1774, when it joined that of Lastra a Gangalandi. At the administrative level it currently falls within the fraction of Ponte a Signa.
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What see
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Santa_Lucia_a_Monteorlando.jpg/220px-Santa_Lucia_a_Monteorlando.jpg)
- 1 Church of Santa Lucia in Monteorlando (In the locality of Santa Lucia in Monteorlando). 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.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/Campanile_Gangalandi.jpg/220px-Campanile_Gangalandi.jpg)
- 2 Parish church of San Martino in Gangalandi (In the hamlet of Ponte a Signa, 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.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Cappella_di_Dini.png/220px-Cappella_di_Dini.png)
- 3 Chapel of the Madonna dei Dini (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.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Cimitero_di_San_Martino_a_Gangalandi.jpg/220px-Cimitero_di_San_Martino_a_Gangalandi.jpg)
- 4 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.
- 5 Villa Valdirose (In the Val di Rose locality). Built in the second half of the 19th century, it was completely renovated in 2007 and now offers the Bed and Brekfast service.
- 6 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.
- Villa Paola.
- Villa Sassoforte.
Events and parties
- Feast of the Rificolona.
In September.
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Wikipedia contains an entry concerning San Martino in Gangalandi