Monsummano Terme SPA
A strategic road location, in a dominant position over the Padule di Fucecchio and the Valdinievole, the hill of Monsummano Alto was fortified at least since the 11th century with a defensive system that was increased and expanded over time until it included the entire top of the hill in the late Middle Ages. There is documentary evidence of the castle of Montesommano starting from 1005, when it depended on the abbey of Sant’Antimo in Val d’Orcia and was partly ceded to Ildebrando degli Aldobrandeschi. After various changes of ownership, in 1218 the castle was sold to the Municipality of Lucca, although for some years the inhabitants of the castle had already constituted themselves as a rural municipality with their own magistrates. The hill of Monsummano faces that of Montevettolini, a village of medieval origin, also subject to the Florentine Signoria. Founded around the 12th century and subjected to the city of Pistoia in 1227, the castle of Montevettolini became a free commune during the 13th century, becoming a refuge for Florentine and Lucchese exiles during the bitter struggles between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, until it surrendered to Uguccione della Faggiola after the defeat of the Guelphs at Montecatini in 1315. Under the dominion of Lucca until the death of Castruccio Castracani, Montevettolini and Monsummano joined the League of Valdinievole against Florence in 1328, a city to which they however had to submit after having suffered the siege of Gherardino Spinola, the new lord of Lucca. The entry into the Florentine orbit allowed the castle of Montevettolini to have a fervent and rich life, animated among other things by the activity of the twelve brotherhoods of the town, and became even more prosperous when the first Medici grand dukes chose it as a place of rest for hunting, and this favored it compared to the Castle of Monsummano, already in strong decline since the end of the fourteenth century. Belonging to the Florentine district instead stifled the development of the community of Monsummano, which already from the end of the fourteenth century, configured as a rural village, began a progressive decline, also determined by the re-swamping of the lands surrounding the hill and the consequent interruption of the roads. – https://www.toscana.info/pistoia/provincia/monsummano-terme/