The town of Collesalvetti owes its autonomy to Napoleon’s occupation, during which in 1808 it became a “comunitas”. It is in the province of Livorno and it has a population of about 16,000 inhabitants. Architectures that recall the grand ducal age such as the church of the saints Quirico and Giulitta and the “Leopoldino” waterwork are in this town.
As said above, even if the history of the town started in 1808, the origins of the village are far more ancient. In the Middle Ages it is known as Piano di Porto e Colline and it was constituted of many autonomous towns and parishes. The latter were administered by the now disappeared parish of San Lorenzo in Piazza. Its territory embraced the towns that nowadays are called Collesalvetti, Vicarello and Stagno that depended upon a Benedictine monastery, now disappeared.
The town that was called Colle in the Medieval times and that was the progenitor of the modern chief town was a small fortress owned by a Pisan family. Yet, during the Middle Ages, the surrounding area was not densely populated as it is today. In effect, alluvia and river floods, together with the process of paludification of the Tuscan sea coast, had obliged most of its inhabitants to shelter on healthier hills.
The authority that Pisa exercised on Piano di Porto e Colline lasted until this sea-faring republic could defend itself from Florence’s pressure. Since the XIV century, the slow Florentine expansion on the Pisan countryside, first, and later on the town itself began to rise. It was thanks to the intervention of the Medici, first, and of the Lorraine, later, in the grand ducal times that farmers started to populate the territory of Collesalvetti in great numbers since they were reassured by reclamation works that gave life to productive and cultivable lands. The modern town develops around the ancient fortress that had become a Medicean villa.
With the Napoleonic parenthesis at the beginning of the XIX century, before the Congress of Vienna of 1815 gave the town back to the grand duchy, the creation of the autonomous town of Collesalvetti was carried out. The territorial reorganization established by Napoleon gave life to the current jurisdiction through the detachment of some territories of Pisa, Livorno and Rosignano. In more recent times, one further change occurred with the detachment of Gabbro.