Valdarno
The Valdarno presents a landscape where the typical Tuscan hills on the outskirts of San Miniato, covered with olive groves and dotted with medieval towns and villages, in contrast to the valley floor is characterized by a productive and lively shopping for the presence of some of the major districts industrial and craft of Tuscany.
The area, rich in tradition and history, preserves the traces of long matches between Pisa and Florence for the possession of these lands and the old route of the Via Francigena, an ancient pilgrimage route which is still partly preserved.
The area has a varied landscape of green hills is accented with wooded areas rich in wildlife that alternate with hills characterized by intensive agriculture and farms and dotted with old farmhouses and monumental structures in the shape of a basilica called "tobacconist", found mainly San Miniato and witnesses in the territory of the intensive cultivation and processing of tobacco exercised until the late ’60s.
The landscape, designed by the land uses handed down over time, is made of alternating between cultivated fields, olive groves, vineyards, forests, shrub vegetation mats, rows of trees and farm roads.
Of particular importance are the hilly nature of Cerbaie, largely occupied by deciduous and pine forests of pine, the wetlands of the former bed of Lake Bientina, places of refuge and protection for animals and conservation of wetland ecological and biological diversity and the Natural Reserve of Montefalcone, located on the last layers of Cerbaie.
Visit these places or to spend holidays offers the opportunity to reside in characteristic centers rich in history, surrounded by countryside and from which you can achieve with day trips to the nearby towns of Tuscany and the beaches of the Tyrrhenian Sea, not forgetting maybe hiking in the green countryside dotted with numerous characteristic small towns, villas, churches and castles, where good restaurants are enjoying the most genuine products of the place: wine, olive oil, cured meats, cheeses, truffles and cakes.
The valley floor is characterized by lively production and commercial activity. This area is one of the main industrial districts of Tuscany and craft: the District of Leather, first in Italy in the production of sole leather, the real leather and leather footwear.
In Pisa the part of the Leather District includes the towns of Santa Croce and Castelfranco di Sotto. In recent years it has stood for the progressive and continuous improvement of the quality of the leather, finished leathers, as well as the renovation and expansion of production facilities, innovation and technological development.