Grassina

Grassina, also known as Tegolaia, is a charming village close to Florence and Bagno a Ripoli, internationally known for an evocative historical Christmas parade. The toponym derives from the homonym torrent and houses built near its banks, while Tegolaia used to be another area located on the right side of the river Ema.

It was decided to call Grassina a hamlet that developed later on the left side of the torrent, at the confluence between Grassina and river Ema. The population of artisans and kiln-men started to increase in the middle on the nineteenth-century, taking advantage of those torrents. The Florentine nobles sent to Grassina their linen to wash. The business of the laundresses grew and then people coming from the Piedmont region (when Firenze was the capital) asked their linen to be washed by the able washerwomen from Grassina, later on were the hotel-keepers and so on. One of the most widespread images of Grassina at the end of the XIX century, was indeed a candid expanse of sheets hung outside to dry in the sun.