|  Inhabitants in 1991: 36.774
 Situated
in Maremma, on a coastal tract facing the Island of Elba, the municipal
territory extends for 130,10 square kilometres. Originally a Podesta
Office and then capital of an autonomous State, the municipality reached
its present day aspect in 1970 when Lido di Follonica was detached
from it and aggregated to the same name municipality.
If in antiquity there rose in the vicinity the Etruscan Populonia and
then the Roman port of Falesia, the origins of Piombino seem to be
placed around the XI century, when it appeared in the documents as
a fortified place owned by the monks of the nearby Abbey who still
had the name of Falesia. They, in the course of the XII century, transferred
it part by part to the republic of Pisa who by the first half of
the 1200s already had full possession of it. The geographic and environmental
characteristics of the territory, almost unassailable by sea and
situated in front of an Island rich in iron ore, pushed the Genovesi
several times to attempt to conquer it between the XII and XIII centuries;
while in the 1300 its port lined with houses and warehouses stimulated
the appetite of the Firenze
merchants always looking out for slipways on the Tyrrhenian.
 A decisive change came about in 1399 when Pisa fell into the hands of
the Visconti, Piombino became, together with Elba, Pianos and Montecristo,
the capital of the new Lordly State of the Appiani. It then enjoyed
a rapid growth and flourished particularly well reaching, in the course
of the 1400s, a count of perhaps eight thousand inhabitants, even if it
could not liberate itself politically and militarily from the Fiorentina
guardianship (from 1404), then from that of the Aragonesi di Napoli
(from 1463). Because of various events and some temporary dominion interruptions
it remained with the Appiani (who had an Imperial investiture in 1503
and declared Princes in 1594) until 1634, when it passed to the Ludovisi;
and from these in 1706, by inheritance, to the Buoncompagni. In the meantime,
the strategic importance of the little maritime State in the Mediterranean
Echelon had made both the French and the Spanish alternately keep the
recovery of the city stable, which however, now appeared economically
decadent (in 1736 it could not even reach one thousand inhabitants). Towards
the end of the 1700s it was successively occupied by the English, the
French and by the Napoletani; retaken by Napoleon in 1803, in 1805
was assigned by him to his sister Elisa Baciocchi. With the Vienna
Congress in 1815, Piombino was definitively annexed to the Grand Duchy
of Toscana. It became the stronghold of the workers movement administrated
by the socialists until the beginning of the 1900, the city hosted, during
the Fascist period, a tenacious clandestine opposition and in July
1943 saw the creation of a commission of Antifascist concentration who
foreshadowed the CLN. After the spontaneous uprising which in September
1943 tried to impede the occupation of the city by the German troops,
the Liberation of Piombino came after bitter fighting on 25 June
1944.
Historical info reproduced upon authorization of Regione Toscana - Dipartimento della Presidenza E Affari Legislativi e Giuridici
Translated by Ann Mountford |
