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Montecatini Terme is an Italian municipality in Tuscany. The town is located at the eastern end of Piana di Lucca and has a strong vocation for tourism, as well as industrial and commercial industries related to the spa, which in turn has increased the interest for hotel accommodation in the region. In 2021, the town became part of the transnational UNESCO World Heritage Site under the name 'Great Spa Towns of Europe'.
Montecatini Castello, today’s Montecatini Alto, was documented by medieval times. In the settlement there was already a spa, thanks to the salt waters of the city, which later also flowed into the plain below. There is evidence for this in a document from 1340 which refers to the extraction of salt from the water.
Francesco I of Lorraine and Maria Teresa of Austria went to Florence in 1739 and stayed there for three months. They then entrusted the government to a Council of Regency that operated until 1765. The Regency tried to resolve promptly the problem of reclaiming the marshes, but the whole thing was more difficult than expected.
The major development of this spa city took place during the 19th century. During this time the city was called Bagni di Montecatini, and its construction was based around the spa park. The spa park is a huge green area in the middle of the city that encompasses more than 460,000 square meters. It is almost always lush and green because of the area’s most valuable recourse, water.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).