Colle Val d'Elsa
As its name shows this village is situated on the Elsa River which flows straight to the bigger Arno River. Along the Elsa banks there are many villages, such as Poggibonsi and Certaldo, but Colle has a special relationship with this river. Since the oldest times, they say also before XI century AD, Colle's villagers found a system to exploit Elsa's waters by channels which brought the waters through different directions, so that the water flowed faster and made the water - mills work.
These channels were called gore and in Colle there are two larger channels: one is called Lombrandina, which goes beneath Spugna (a locality where there is a church) and the other one is called Piazza which, as the name says, crossed the main square.
In those time until the nineteenth century a large quantity of paper and woollen mills grew in the area of Colle, so that Colle became well known for its paper's production. Nowadays the gore are closed and empty because they were becoming dangerous buildings: waters run very fast and if someone falls in them for sure he could have a difficult time. One of the places where you still can see them are the Pieve in Piano's washing courtyards used still few years ago until the washing machine's have came. Colle people stopped to producing paper and nowadays their factories' main production are crystal manufacture; nowadays instead of being within the dump fresh gore they get hottest winds in front of the burning ovens!

WHAT DO SEE

MUSEUM: MUSEO CIVICO AND ARTE SACRA / MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO DUOMO, THE CASTLE, PALAZZO PRETORIO, AND ALSO CRYSTAL LABORATORY