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Although its official denomination is Valleriana (from Valle dei rii = Valley of brooks), the northern part of Pescia's commune is probably better known as Svizzera Pesciatina (= Pescia's Switzerland). Such a strange name was invented in XIX century by Jean Charles Sismondi, an intellectual from Geneva who was exiled in Italy for political reasons, to whom these areas remembered his birth place. On the gentle slopes of green hills there definitely stand out ten ancient villages, the so-called Castella (=Castles), which are: Vellano (600 m.s.l.m.), Pietrabuona (110 m.), Medicina (537 m.), Fibbialla (424 m.), Aramo (397 m.), San Quirico (529 m.), Sorana (410 m.), Castelvecchio (450 m.), Stiappa (630 m.) and Pontito (750 m.). Of an eleventh village, Lignana, destroyed by Pisa's army in 1362, there remain only a perfectly intact church and a lot of ruins.

Inside the villages, almost every stone is several centuries old and there are many evocative landscapes. Among the most important monuments, we remember the Parish Church of Vellano and above all the romanesque Parish Church of S. Tommaso in Castelvecchio, which is perhaps the most important sacred building in Pistoia's Province.

In Middle Ages Pescia's Mountain found itself at the boundary between Lucca's and Florence's areas of influence and it was often involved in their bloody struggles. Because of their stragegic importance, the villages were fortified many times and neverthless they underwent lots of devastations.

As the fights ended, life became more quiet, while the defensive works, which were no longer necessary, progressively ruined and today there remain only  very few traces.

After Italy's unification, Pescia's commune progressively began to expand towards mountain and this continued up to 1929, when it included the territory of Vellano's commune, which had been broken up because it had gone bankrupt.

During world war II, Pescia's mountain paid its tribute of human lifes as well, mostly in the occasion of the 17th august 1944 nazi reprisal in San Quirico, when twenty peoples were shot as a revenge for the death of two german officers.