Peccioli | Legoli

The oldest document referable to the hamlet of Legoli (Peccioli) is a contract of sale dated 1139 in which Count Ranieri di Travale dei Pannocchieschi, son of the better known Count Ugolino, and Countess Sibilla, his wife, sold a large property of theirs whose boundaries included the Castle of Legoli.

Between the Chu4rch and the hills

The medieval complex concentrated in Via del Castello and Via di Mezzo shows the presence of a tower house and the Church of Saints Giusto and Bartolomeo, severely damaged in the last war and rebuilt on the original layout together with the bell tower.

The church terrace offers a unique panorama over Valdera: a flourishing countryside, shaped by the passage of the Era river, made up of woods, wheat fields, vineyards and olive groves. From here, the view extends as far as Peccioli and, on clear days, as far as the Apuan Alps.

The Oratory of Santa Caterina and the Tabernacle of Benozzo Gozzoli

Instead, just outside Legoli is the Oratory of Santa Caterina, built in 1822 as a funeral chapel by a local family to house Benozzo Gozzoli‘s country tabernacle, begun by the artist in 1478 after he fled here from Pisa, where he was working on the Camposanto Monumentale, due to a plague epidemic. The work consists of a large masonry pillar, rectangular in shape, sunk into four niches and entirely frescoed. Clear themes of death and suffering caused by the epidemic emerge in the frescoes, especially in the depiction of the Crucifixion of Christ with the Virgin and Saints Francis, Dominic and John the Evangelist. Also intense are the scenes of the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian and the Incredulity of St. Thomas, where the apostle touches the wound in Jesus’ side. The other frescoes depict the Annunciation, the Evangelists, the Fathers of the Church with the Blessing Christ in the centre, and a Holy Conversation with three curtain-bearing angels and a cross-bearing Christ against the backdrop of a medieval city.

The Green Triangle – Il Triangolo Verde

Since 1997, Legoli owes its notoriety to having succeeded in transforming the management of Belvedere SpA’s waste treatment and disposal plant into an efficient industrial process. Inside the plant, called Triangolo Verde (Green Triangle), there is an amphitheatre and a number of works by great contemporary artists such as Tremlett, Staino and Naturaliter, who have turned the dump into an art site.

Contemporary Art

Legoli is also a centre for contemporary art installations: here, in 2006, the artist Vittorio Messina created ‘Four Mute Men’: four tall, imposing silhouettes of men, built of tufa bricks (only wall and contour lines). Each man carries a kind of iron painter’s easel on his head. The reference is to a story by Pliny the Elder. A potter’s daughter was in love with a young Athenian, who was called to arms. At the moment of farewell, the young woman noticed that the sun was casting the shadow of her beloved on a wall. She immediately traced it for a memory and both painting and sculpture originated from it.