Fornaci di Barga

Fornaci di Barga is a frazione of Barga in the Province of Lucca, Tuscany, Italy. It is located 165 m above sea level, on the left bank of the river Serchio.

The first historically documented evidence of Fornaci goes back to approximately 1000AD. The ancient village took the name of Caterozzo, today just the name of one of the four districts of Fornaci. Probably the name comes from “cala” meaning water and “tur” meaning passage, which joined together means ford, describing the original swampy territory on which the first village rose, frequently flooded by the Serchio river. The population was constituted from farmers, fishermen and breeders of cattle who traded their products with the Versiliesi (traders from Versilia, the coastal region of Tuscany) in exchange for spices. A war between the citizens of Lucca and Pope Gregory IX (1230) caused the exodus of the population of Caterozzo and some of the nearby villages to the Apennine mountains. The activity of the "Caterozzo’s Furnaces" which took advantage of the rich deposits of clay, increased in the first half of the 15th century. The village was increasingly becoming, around the various brick-kilns, what would be the centre of today’s Fornaci vecchia. Ancient documents mention the castle of Catarozzo, a sign that the village was protected by castle walls, no trace of which remain today . Thanks to the "Furnaces of Caterozzo" families the pieve of Loppia, of which only the perimeter walls, the facade and the apse remained, was reconstructed and in 1522 was reopened to the faithful. As the village evolved its name changed to become the present one. Of the ancient brick-kilns only one survives to the present day, completely restored and transformed into a shopping centre. The main expansion of the village happened, however, during the first world war thanks to the building, in 1915, of a branch of Societa’ Metallurgica Italiana belonging to the Orlando Group, an ammunition factory that provided jobs to thousands of people. As a consequence many new houses had to be built for the workers, which resulted in the Fornaci of the present day. Today the factory has lost a large part of its original purpose and has become specialized in the working of copper and its alloys. In the first years of the present century, with the advent of the euro, the factory, today called KME Group, started to produce coins. Consequently the village is now called “Fornaci, the village where the euro is born”. These days the village has become enriched by many shops and has become the commercial centre of the Serchio valley and its Garfagnana neighbour.

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