A valley that holds together the partisan war, Don Milani's school and the woman who topped the votes for the Constituent Assembly. Bianca Bianchi was born in Vicchio in 1914; the Lavacchini Brigade fought on Monte Giovi; the school of Barbiana operated in the parish above Vicchio.
Book the property →The Mugello concentrates within twenty kilometres three nodes of twentieth-century Italian civic history. The Resistance: Monte Giovi (992 m) was the operational base of the "Vittorio Sinigaglia–Lavacchini" Brigade, which from autumn 1943 to summer 1944 controlled a stretch of the Apennines between the Sieve and Mugnone valleys. Cited in Leonardo Montemaggi, Le Brigate Garibaldi della Toscana (La Pietra, 1985).
The Gothic Line, the German defensive system that ran 320 km from Versilia to the Adriatic, crossed the Mugello at Passo della Futa. The German Military Cemetery of the Futa, designed by Dieter Oesterlen and inaugurated in 1969, holds 30,683 burials of Wehrmacht soldiers fallen in the 1944 fighting. It is the largest German military cemetery in Italy.
Bianca Bianchi (Vicchio 1914 – Florence 2000) graduated in philosophy from the University of Florence in 1938 with Ludovico Limentani, with a thesis on Karl Jaspers; she taught in middle schools and during the war collaborated with Resistance committees. Elected to the Constituent Assembly on 2 June 1946 for the Italian Socialist Party in the Florence-Pistoia-Pisa-Livorno-Lucca-Massa constituency, she was the most-voted woman in Italy with 15,057 preferences. She co-signed Article 30 of the Constitution on parental duties towards children, including those born outside marriage. The reference biography is Pier Luigi Falossi, Bianca Bianchi (Pagnini Editore, 2004).
Don Lorenzo Milani arrived as parish priest at Sant'Andrea a Barbiana, an isolated parish above Vicchio, in December 1954. There he founded the school that became the model of his pedagogy of "I care", documented in Lettera a una professoressa (LEF, May 1967). He died at Barbiana in June 1967, a few weeks after the book's publication. Pope Francis visited his tomb in June 2017.
I care.— motto of the school of Barbiana
One of the five rooms of the Leopoldina is named after Bianca Bianchi. Double room, first floor, shared bathroom with the Emilio room, east-facing.