The town of Pontassieve takes its name from the bridge that links Florence with the Val di Sieve. It has a population of about 20,000 inhabitants and houses important architectures such as Palazzo Sansoni-Trombetta and the Parish of San Giovanni a Remole.
The first news on the territory dates to the domination by the Da Quona, a family that ad been present in the area since the XI century.
At the end of the XII, century this noble family decided to move to Florence. The urbanization of important rural families was a phenomenon that was functional not to lose its own social prestige. In effect, that was the period when Florence started extending its dominions on the countryside and taming the ancient feudatory families in the rural areas. In 1207, therefore, the Da Quona decided to move and sold almost all their properties to the bishopric of Florence.
The modern Pontassieve was immediately considered as an extremely important strategic area and convinced the Florentines of the need to fortify it. This is how the castle of San Michele Arcangelo (or Castle Sant’Angelo) developed. It rose at the end of the XIV century with the aim to become one of the main points of reference of the surrounding territory. Three out of the four doors of the fortress are still visible today: to the South, there is Porta Filicaia, to the West there is Fiorentina and to the East there is the Porta Aretina or Porta dell’Orologio.
In the course of years, numerous houses and spontaneous groups of shops and trade places appeared near the important bridge over the Sieve that linked Florence with the Mugello. While the town developed the name “Pontassieve”, the other name “Castello di San Michele Arcangelo” was gradually being abandoned and this denoted the expansion of the small “mercatale”.
Without any doubt, the XVIII century was when the town experienced a strong growth. At the time of the Lorraine’s Grand Duchy two new roads were built, one for the Casentino and the other for the Romagna region. The intensification of traffics caused both an economic and demographic development in Pontassieve that further benefited from the construction of the railway linking Florence to Rome in 1859. The importance of this railway junction also represented a price to be paid for Pontassieve. In effect, the town was the object of heavy bombardments during the Second World War.