Fonte Gaia	Fontebranda	Fonte d' Ovile	Fonte del Casato
Fonte Nuova	Fonte di Follonica	Fonte di Pescaia

The people of old must have considered water to be one of the most precious and important goods/natural resources if they expended so much effort in searching for it everywhere and once found, collected it in places that they made beautiful and protected with fortifications.

And it did finish there. The water that was not used right away was not allowed to drain back to the earth from which is had been robbed with such effort, but supplied the trades and crafts through its overflow. It was also directed into canals to supply other fountains, one hope smaller ones than the monumental ones in the city center. Often equally important little fountains, wells, and cisterns until it finally returned to the earth, but now without first irrigation fields at the bottoms of the valleys, and making them fertile.

In sum, for centuries there was a system for the strategic utilization of water: on the one hand are the so-called major fountains, located at critical junctures within the urban infrastructure, whose water supply required huge public works projects and the outlay of enormous amounts of money (examples of which are provided by the network of over twenty kilometers of bottini that bring water to the Fonte Gaia and Fontebranda); on the other hand is the entire fabric made up of hundreds of minor fountains, of cisterns, of tiny fountains, of canals, of wells, that together form the hydrologic patrimony, sui generis, of our city.

To obtain an idea--and today unfortunately it can be no more than an idea--of what the hydrological universe of our city, but especially of the love that our ancestors demonstrated for it, it will be useful to take a stroll among some of the "places of water."

The classic fountain of the thirteenth century was composed of three basins installed at different levels: from the highest one drew potable water for drinking, in the middle one watered animals, and in the basin at the bottom one did laundry. The functions were stratified according to how much each use would degrade the water quality because each basin was fed by the overflow of the one above it.

The location of the fountains in the various zone of the city was also important to provide the means to quickly extinguish the fires which were one of the major sorts of calamities besetting the city. When a house caught fire the bells were sounded in a particular manner to signal everyone owning a cart or wagon that could carry water barrels. Cart owners understood that they would be enlisted by the city to bring water as soon as possible after filling up containers at the fountains. Additionally there were six specialists whose duty it was to be the first to arrive at any fire.

The water was very important, thus it fell to the Contrade, or neighborhood associations, to decide where fountains would be built to best improve its own hydrological situation: the Nicchio Contrada, which built the Fonte dei Pispini at its own expense offers an example of how authority was delegated. And, their responsibility did not end with the completion of the fountain: whenever there was a problem with the pipes or anything else, it was the Contrada that performed the maintenance.