At the headwaters of the Arno, the site of Le Ciliegeta was not a temple in the conventional sense, but a place of offering, a stips votiva, or votive deposit. Discovered in 1836, it yielded a remarkable hoard: over six hundred bronze figurines, more than a thousand lumps of aes rude (the crude, uncoined bronze that served as early money), and some two thousand weapons. Such sanctuaries were common in pre-Roman Italy, where rivers and springs were seen as thresholds to the divine; pilgrims would leave valuable objects as thanks or supplication, often burying them in the earth or casting them into the water. The sheer scale of the finds here suggests a cult of considerable importance, drawing worshippers over many generations. Today, the site is quiet, but the soil remembers a time when the river’s source was a place of profound transaction between the mortal and the sacred.
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