Guided tours of the archaeological area of Santa Mustiola | Peccioli

On the occasion of the Archeology Nights, the excavation of Santa Mustiola will be open to everyone on 12 and 19 July
with a guided tour of the archaeological area, with observation of the sky and musical entertainment. Reservation required on 0587.672158
The archaeological site is located on a small hill on the border between the provinces of Pisa and Florence along one of the most important roads that once led to Rome. From this excavation finds are emerging that can tell the history of the area in different eras. From the Roman cistern, the only one of its kind in the entire Valdera, passing through the signs of the Longobard settlement up to the church, built around the year 1000, which later collapsed and whose stones could even have been looted and used by the local population in more recently to build some of the houses in what is now the Ghizzano hamlet.

The excavation of the cemetery, which surrounds the church building on all sides, bears witness to how many members of the wealthy social classes had chosen this as their burial place. If with the discovery in 2014 of the so-called “tomb of Isadora” and its exceptional equipment (exhibited at the Archaeological Museum of Peccioli) we could attribute the burial of a young aristocrat near a small country church to a coincidence, the subsequent discoveries of other graves has evidenced a voluntary action in choosing this site. During the excavation, a burial of only men was brought to light, probably members of several generations of the same family, housed inside a brick caisson which shows a break from a structural failure. The same, perhaps, which could have generated the collapse of the sacred building already during the final stages of the Middle Ages.

One of the elements of greatest interest, which concerns the guided tours, is the Roman earthenware cistern dating back to the 1st century AD. A unicum in the rural area of the Valdera. The structure, which was used in Roman times to supply water to the structures that must have been located at the foot of the hill, gradually lost its functionality. Thus becoming a space used by the Lombards as a small landfill for everyday objects, such as dishes and leftovers from meals.