Piombino, Italy

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Falesiae. In the sixth century A.D. the Lombards, thrusting into Italy during the Great Migrations, destroyed Populonia, long a neighbor and rival, and thus increased the importance of Piombino, which in the 12th and 13th centuries became a major Pisan stronghold. Thereafter it frequently changed hands, until the Congress of Vienna in 1814 assigned it to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The name Piombino comes from the Italian word piombo (lead), reflecting the importance of the metalworking industry to the town's economy. Iron ore from Elba was already being smelted at Populonia in Etruscan times; and when modern industry came to Piombino in the latter part of the 19th century the use of new and efficient techniques made it possible to win iron not only from the ore of the nearby Colline Metallífere but from the huge slag-heaps left by the ironworkers of antiquity. Present-day Piombino is still a considerable industrial town, with blast furnaces and rolling-mills as prominent landmarks.