History

Lombard settlers established the original settlement in the eighth century, according to a document dated 713 preserved in Lucca’s Archbishop’s Archive. They built a church dedicated to the martyr Miniato, whose name the city would bear.

Frederick II of Swabia fortified the town in the 13th century, building the fortress that commanded the Arno valley and housing his Tuscan vicar there. This imperial connection earned San Miniato its medieval epithet “al Tedesco” (to the German)—a name that persisted for centuries despite shifting political winds.

On 31 December 1370, San Miniato signed peace with Florence, abandoning the Pisan calendar and adopting the Florentine one. The name changed to San Miniato al Fiorentino, then simply San Miniato. In 1622 it became a bishopric seat, separating from the diocese of Lucca.

The young Napoleon twice visited the town, seeking a nobility certificate for his family’s Tuscan origins to enter the French military academy. A plaque on the Buonaparte palace marks his later visit during the Italian Campaign to see his distant relative, canon Filippo Buonaparte.

San Miniato remained Florentine until 1925, when it passed to the province of Pisa. World War II dealt severe damage: the “massacre of the Duomo” and destruction of medieval structures, including Frederick’s Rocca, which was subsequently rebuilt.