Every design for Sesto Fiorentino

Sesto Fiorentino, known locally as just Sesto, is porcelain country. In the eighteenth century the Marquis Carlo Ginori founded the Manifattura di Doccia here, one of the first porcelain works in Europe; under the name Richard-Ginori it is still in town and is the largest porcelain maker in Italy. Over a hundred pottery producers have grown up in its wake, along with a state school that teaches the craft.

Growing up in Sesto means growing up among workshops and kilns, in a town with a stubborn streak: in the late nineteenth century it stood at the heart of the workers' struggle, and it was the first town in Tuscany to elect a socialist mayor. There are stranger memories too. Sesto and its surroundings inspired the setting of The Adventures of Pinocchio, and a bust of Sherlock Holmes stands in town, because scholars decided that Sesto was the unnamed Italian town in one of his adventures. Older layers lie close by: the Tomba etrusca della Montagnola, the church of Santa Maria a Quinto and the Museo Richard-Ginori della Manifattura di Doccia, which tells the factory's story.

Coming back from Florence, the slopes of Monte Morello appear first, then the plain opens out towards the Osmannoro, and you know you are back in Sesto.