Visiting the town	Territory and art	History	The ancient roads
Bagno a Ripoli	How to get there
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The Parish of San Donnino a Villamagna in a map of the Captains of the Guelph Party

Many "minor" roads follow ancient routes, like the one shown here, near Villamagna

The road network in the district of Bagno a Ripoli dates back to the Middle Ages thanks to its geographical conformation and the position of its most important parishes, Ripoli and Antella. Plesner, a well known scholar, formulated the theory that the road system here had what was then clearly a "bridging" function. In fact all the principal roads in the parish led towards the parish churches - while all the smaller subsidiary churches naturally were situated along the route - even when the religious building itself stood on the other side of some natural obstacle (like a river or a ridge of hills).

The territory however was also crossed by several important highways like the Cassia , the oldest of these roads, which retraced the Etruscan route along the righthand bank of the Arno on the slopes of Pratomagno;the next road in time was the Roman road for San Donato in Collina, built as a variation of the older Via Cassia to avoid the loop in the river at Pontassieve and crossing the Arno at both Incisa and Rignano.

Then there were the ancient "Maremma roads", created by the transfer of flocks of sheep and cattle to new pastures; regularly used up until the Second World War, these routes passed right through Bagno a Ripoli and confirm the importance of the road network in this area. It is also interesting to note that the village of San Donato in Collina stood in a focal point for all these routes; travellers passed this way after crossing the Arno at Rosano, coming from the Sieve Valley, or at Rignano, on their way down from Pratomagno.