Stories of invasions and wars, of houses  on stilts like the Amazon ones, of Roman land reclamations, of explorers like Amerigo Vespucci. Along the road that connected to the sea, outside the medieval walls, a village grows with shelters for horses, shops, inns, a Romanesque church dating back to the 12th century which preserves a ciborium by Della Robbia. Here a plaque recalls that in 1439 even the Eastern emperor John VII Palaeologus stayed. And then recently, braiders, workers, Garibaldi: Peretola, is a small piece of Florence that tells the  great story. first example of the use of glazed majolica later made famous by the Della Robbia workshop.

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**Visit for groups by reservation.

The production of straw hats offered employment to many women, who through their work redeemed entire communities, even in Peretola. At the end of the 19th century, the crisis and the competition from products from China, Japan and Java dragged entire families into poverty, and the first to pay the consequences were the workers. Among them, Barsene Conti, who animated a revolt, which lasted more than a month which was also joined by the tobacconists of Florence, the braiders of Fiesole and the straw weavers of Empoli. In the end, they were defeated but their bravery marks a crucial and little known moment of the union battles in Italy.