Fra le città. Sulle "fasce di eccettuazione" nella Toscana alto e pieno-medievale (secoli VII-XIII)

The article aims to offer an overview of non-urban areas that, over the long diachrony, served as coordination poles of political, religious, and economic life. These were rural areas located halfway between the major cities of Tuscany, such as Bientina, Pescia, Fucecchio, Empoli, San Miniato, and San Gimignano. Within them, the royal fisc held vast landed estates that benefited from a status of exemption with respect to the ordinary civil and ecclesiastical districts. Ecclesiastical and monastic foundations were founded here by the major political players that gravitated around these estates: primarily, counts and bishops. Here were also formed essential nodes in the connective tissue that innervated early and high-medieval Tuscany, with villages, bridges, ports, and markets. Therefore, we decided to define these areas as “exemption belts”.