The Montalbano itinerary: Buriano-Sasso Regino-Torre S. Alluccio

Buriano is a hamlet of the municipality of Quarrata, on the slopes of Montalbano. The village is divided into the villages of: Cerretino, Baugiano, Maestrino, Tacinaia, Mulina,Pollaiolo. In the latter there is the house of the father of the famous Florentine painters of the fifteenth century, Piero, and Antonio Benci, called the "Pollaiolo". Although its origins are ancient, and its existence attested in the Lombard era, Buriano had considerable importance in the Middle Ages. The church of San Michele Arcangelo, also known as the Monumental Complex of Buriano, built over a Longobard guard, houses, along the road that surrounds it, a way of the cross, consisting of fourteen paintings and an olive cross, from Jerusalem.

The Sasso Regino is a huge limestone boulder or rock which lends its name to the whole area. Before the Second World War, this area was totally without any vegetation and from the boulder itself, you could enjoy a vast panoramic view over all the plains of Pistoia, Prato, and Florence. Sasso Regino's natural spring is one of the loveliest springs in the Montalbano area.

In the Middle Ages, the Sant'Alluccio Tower overlooked Montalbano. It was used as a shelter for the many pilgrims that, in those days, used to cross over these uninhabited places. Attached to the ancient hermitage, there once was a chapel that, over the centuries, was gradually turned into a rustic building used by peasants who lived there, after it had lost its original and primary use. It is said that it was built by the monk named Alluciem, who together with his fellow monks – Justis and Barontes – left the Cluny monastery and the Cluny order which they belonged to. These three monks came to these hills and stopped in three different places, then each one of them built there a chapel and a hermitage.