the History of Montelupo

Heralding the middle of the sixteenth century, the crisis of Montelupo’s productivity lasts until the end of the century, at which point it coincided with the construction of the Medicean Villa Ambrogiana (1589 – 1591). With the repeated epidemics of the seventeenth century, and the accompanying demographic, economic and political crisis which affected Italy, similarly the vitality of Montelupo took a hard blow, enough to practically destroy one of the major centres of Italian production.

The activities of the ceramics and terracotta furnaces, never entirely suspended, proceeded with only a modest growth, in the second half of the eighteenth century, alongside the development of a new sector, that of glassmaking.

In 1784, there was also the removal of the parish church from the vicinity of the castle to that of the village. The new church was built on the site of a former church belonging to the Dominican monks of Santa Maria Novella. »»