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Towns of the area

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Rufina

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Inhabitants in 1991: 5.922

The municipal territory of Rufina extends for 45,68 square kilometres in the Val di Sieve in a hilly zone. The origin of the municipality is recent, having been instituted in 1915 with the separation from the municipality of Pelago for the most part on the slopes of la Sieve.

In the Medieval era the jurisdiction over Rufina's municipal territory was divided between the Episcopate of Fiesole and the Guidi Counts. Even if the place name is recorded for the first time in a document of 1090, the origin of the town as agglomerate of a certain importance is not earlier than the middle of the XVIII century. In fact at the start of the 1700s the canalisation of the Rufina stream was started on the tract which runs into the Sieve, it was completed by an initiative by the Friars of Poggiolo; a little later there were subsequent land reclaim interventions on the territory on which the greatest part of the town stands today.

The town then had new impulse to take advantage of the commercial opportunities offered by the Firenze-Roma railway, built in 1859, and growing further with the opening of the railway line Pontassieve-Borgo San Lorenzo inaugurated in 1912. In 1913 by now well developed and in good condition economically, Rufina, until then a district of the municipality of Pelago, crowned its aspiration to become an autonomous municipality managing to elect the majority of councillors from their own town into the community council of Pelago and thus approving the request enabling it to be submitted to the Firenze Prefect. If the capital has relatively recent origins it has however ancient settlements in its territory, like Turicchi, which in the Medieval era was Seat of a feudal county which belonged to the Bishops of Fiesole, and Castiglioni, whose parish church goes back to the XII century.

Places to visit:
The Museum of the Vine and the Wine, housed in the 1500 Poggio Reale villa.

Historical info reproduced upon authorization of Regione Toscana - Dipartimento della Presidenza E Affari Legislativi e Giuridici
Picture by Antonio Barletti
Translated by Ann Mountford


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