Peccioli, the Tuscan village that has transformed an environmental problem into a laboratory of art, business, and community
In the hills of Valdera, a waste treatment plant coexists with monumental installations, wall drawing and culture. Peccioli’s story demonstrates that the regeneration of a territory can begin precisely in the place that no one would want to see. In Tuscany we are used to looking for beauty in places where we already know we can find it.
In the rows of cypress trees, in the medieval villages, in the parish churches, in the vineyards that follow the profile of the hills. Something more difficult happened in Peccioli, in the province of Pisa: it was decided to look for her even where the gaze normally prefers not to stop.
In a landfill. We need to start from this apparent contradiction to understand Peccioli. Because in the hamlet of Legoli there is still a waste disposal and treatment plant. It was not hidden behind a reassuring narrative nor erased from the landscape. Instead, it was taken on as part of the economic reality of the area and, over the years, included in a project in which waste management, energy production, citizen participation, culture and contemporary art began to dialogue.
This is the peculiarity of the so-called Peccioli System, made up of the Municipality, Belvedere SpA and the Peccioliper Foundation: different entities that operate on an institutional, economic and cultural level respectively. According to the official description of the project, this model has produced infrastructure, services, employment, cultural initiatives and interventions in the area over the years.
The story, however, begins with a very concrete problem
In the late 1980s, Legoli had a landfill that collected waste from several municipalities in the area. During a reorganization phase of the Valdera facilities, the local administration chose to intervene on the existing site through a redevelopment project. In 1997, Belvedere SpA was founded, a company promoted by the Municipality of Peccioli to manage the plant. Subsequently, citizens also joined the company: today Belvedere declares around 950 shareholders.
It is a decisive step, because it changes the traditional relationship between community and infrastructure
A landfill is normally perceived solely as something to be removed. Peccioli tried to reverse the perspective: making the community a participant in the economic value produced by the plant and using some of that design capacity to finance development, services, and culture. And this is where art comes in.
When the giants arrived in the garbage. Those who reach the Legoli area encounter monumental figures that seem to emerge directly from the ground.
They are the “Presences”, large sculptures created by Naturaliter in 2011. Giant, silent, almost archaeological human figures, which over time have become one of Peccioli’s most recognizable images. Their strength comes above all from where they are. In a traditional museum they would be works to be contemplated. Here they become a question.
What do we consider worth watching? What relationship do we have with what we consume and subsequently throw away?And above all: are we capable of recognizing the collective responsibility that exists behind waste generation? The works do not erase the industrial function of the area. They make it visible through another language.
After the Attendance, other interventions arrived. In 2016, Sergio and Michele Staino created “At the height of the daisies”; the following year, British artist David Tremlett intervened on the large retaining walls of the plant and on some silos with “Green Triangle”, transforming concrete surfaces into large geometric compositions of color.
The result is surprising precisely because it does not attempt to mask the nature of the place, Industry and art both remain recognizable.
The Green Triangle Tremlett’s design is probably the most effective synthesis of Peccioli’s philosophy. Retaining walls continue to perform their technical function, but at the same time they become the support of a contemporary work.
The Green Triangle has also become a meeting and observation space from which it is possible to read the relationship between the industrial plant and the surrounding landscape. The Municipality describes it as a redevelopment project in which the plant’s production dimension openly coexists with its cultural dimension. It’s an interesting choice because Peccioli doesn’t build its tourism identity by denying what might seem uncomfortable. It does exactly the opposite. It shows it.
From the landfill to the spread museum
Legoli’s experiment did not stand alone. Over time, contemporary art has entered the village and its hamlets, transforming Peccioli into a widespread museum. The MACCA – Museum of Contemporary Art in Cielo Aperto today includes more than seventy works, mainly large-scale installations, distributed between Peccioli and the hamlets of Ghizzano, Legoli, Montecchio and Fabbrica.
Art is therefore not used as decoration. It becomes an urban planning and cultural tool. It serves to reclaim space, create a path, take visitors to an area they otherwise wouldn’t have reached, and generate a new relationship between inhabitants and territory. The project also continues to evolve. In March 2026, a new mural by illustrator Carol Rollo was completed, funded by Belvedere SpA and included in the MACCA expansion project. The work is also born from a participatory project linked to the community and the new generations.
This is probably Peccioli’s most interesting lesson. Not having tried to hide what is normally considered incompatible with the image of Tuscany. The facilities necessary for their management exist. The issue is not to pretend that they are not there, but to ask how they should be managed, controlled and responsibly placed in the territory.
In this sense, art plays a deeper function than embellishment. Bringing a visitor inside a waste treatment plant means putting before their eyes the final part of a process that normally remains invisible: we buy, consume, throw away, but we rarely see where what we have discarded ends up.
