Bibbona

The town has ancient Etruscan origins, to which an original bronze statuette of a goat dates back, which has become a symbol of the town, and today preserved in the Archaeological Museum of Florence.

In its small center we find the Castle of Bibbona, enclosed by the majestic walls and the Parish of Sant'Ilario, attested from 1175 and enlarged in the following centuries, which is one of the few Romanesque churches preserved in this area, the only one to have been saved from wars and raids by Saracen pirates. It was built with local sandstone and preserves a marble stoup and some 16th century paintings, including a canvas depicting Sant'Ilario and San Bartolomeo.‍

The Church of Santa Maria della Pietà dating back to 1482, at at the foot of the Castle of Bibbona, it was built to house the venerated image of the Madonna, author of miracles, painted on a tuff stone placed under the castle, to which Girolamo Savonarola dedicated a poem. The particular Latin epigraph "This is a terrible place", which appears on its facade, (quotation from a biblical verse), and the same Greek cross plan, which recalls that of the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, are still today in the center of studies and researches. ‍

The presence of a tomb of a Tau Knight in the center of the nave is also very interesting. It seems that the architects were Ranieri Tripalle and Vittorio Ghiberti, but that Leonardo da Vinci also contributed to designing the church. Why Leonardo? This is clearer to us if we think of the church of Rennes-Le-Chateaux in France, and of Leonardo as Master of the Prieure de Sion, an order that established that of the Templars. It should be noted in fact that in the architrave of access to the church there is the same inscription Terribils est locus iste.‍

Near the new Town Hall we find the Fonte di Bacchus, of which the ancient Arch is part, in which some mysterious ones are still visible today symbols. From here the water flowed down and fed the cinnamon of Bacchina and Bacchus, depicted with bunches of grapes in their hair and a flask in their hand, and ended up in the wash house and drinking trough, located in the underlying part.