Barberino del Mugello

Barberino di Mugello is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Florence in the Italian region Tuscany, located about 25 km north of Florence. Barberino is situated on the left of the torrent Stura. Its oldest part was developed in the Middle Ages at the foot of the hill on which the old castle of the Cattani di Combiate rises.The village of Barberino expanded lengthwise and the centre was formed on a narrow and winding road, almost parallel to the provincial one to which it links by several side streets. It was destroyed in the year 1300 of the Florentine Republic in the political setting of the latter’s expansion to the detriment of the powerful feudal levels of the area. The village was then reconstructed not much as a fortified village but rather as a “market place”, to become a centre of agricultural and exchange activities. Progressively Barberino experienced a notable development, as far as to become the most populated centre of the area and to assume an economical role of superiority on the neighbouring centres which brought it as head of the homonymous League and Commune, from which the modern Commune derived. Barberino which underwent heavy destructions during the last world war is today in great part reconstructed. Barberino has always had a remarkable important road network the roads that from the plain of the Arno reached the Po plain in Etruscan, Roman, Mediaeval and modern times started from here.