サンタクローチェスルアルノのおすすめライド

Rest stop along the Via Francigena

Very nice view all the way to Pisa and the sea.

Racing bike

Wonderful places and views to enjoy in complete tranquility.

A village center worth seeing, typical for the area

Ascent from Calci with a view of the Pisan plain; descent into the greenery of S.Andrea di Compito (village of Camellias) and return from the Lucca plain. On the last stretch there is a lot of traffic on weekdays, much less on holidays.

Ponte a Cappiano, Tuscany, is a charming place that takes its name from the historic Medici Bridge and Cappiano Hill. This picturesque town is located on the banks of the Usciana Canal, the outlet of the Padule di Fucecchio swamp, and at the foot of the Cerbaie Hills. The bridge of Ponte a Cappiano, which played a crucial role in the Via Francigena, an important medieval pilgrimage route, has a rich history dating back to the early Middle Ages. It was once administered by the Knights Hospitaller of Altopascio and was even studied by the famous artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci. The current form of the bridge was built in the first half of the 16th century by Cosimo I de' Medici. Today, two inscriptions on the bridge still testify to this historic event.

The Cappiano bridge is the monumental bridge built substantially in this form in the mid-16th century on the initiative of Grand Duke Cosimo I, as documented by the marble epigraphs affixed to its brick structures. One of the two towers of the Medici bridge perhaps originally belonged to the fortified bridge of Cappiano that Leonardo drew in the famous map of the Arno valley RL 12685 from the Windsor Castle collection. In Leonardo's time, in fact, the Cappiano bridge still maintained the shape it had achieved a few centuries earlier, when the important crossing of the Francigena over the Usciana had been fortified, providing it with a tower. And it is precisely in the late thirteenth-century forms that Leonardo brought the future Medici bridge of Cappiano to paper.