Vicopisano

Vicopisano sits at the foot of Monte Pisano where the plain of the Arno meets the hills, twenty kilometers east of Pisa. The town was a Pisan river port on the old course of the Arno until the river shifted south in the sixteenth century, leaving the walls inland. After Florence captured Vicopisano in 1407, the Republic sent Filippo Brunelleschi to rebuild its defenses.

He raised the Rocca and the Torre del Brunelleschi between 1434 and 1440, connecting them with a covered passage and reinforcing the existing Torre delle Quattro Porte. Eight medieval towers still stand in the centro storico, more than in any other comune of comparable size in Tuscany. The Pieve di Santa Maria, eleventh-century Romanesque, holds a wooden Deposition carved around 1200, the second oldest in Italy. The hills above the town carry the olive groves that earned Vicopisano its Città dell'Olio listing.