Small town thrilled to learn it makes an appearance in world’s most famous portrait, the Mona Lisa

The Tuscan town of Laterina is excited about having received some major bragging rights after an Italian historian claimed that the bridge painted in the background of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the most famous portrait in the world, belongs to the said town. Historian Silvano Vinceti believes that the Romito di Laterina bridge in the province of Arezzo is the one visible behind the enigmatic Mona Lisa's left shoulder, potentially ending the mystery of the countryside landscape in the background. According to The Guardian, Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa in Florence in the early 16th century, and the identity of the woman, believed to be Lisa del Giocondo, has sparked similar speculation as the distant bridge in the iconic oil painting. 

Other theories have deciphered the bridge as Ponte Buriano, close to Laterina, and Ponte Bobbio in the northern Italian city of Piacenza. However, the biggest clue in the painting is the number of arches. There are visibly four arches for the stone bridge over Mona Lisa’s shoulder. The Ponte Buriano has six arches, while the Ponte Gobbo has more than six.

Using drone photographs and measuring the distance between the two banks of the river in Laterina, including the painting and photos of the area, Vinceti said it was “the Etruscan-Roman bridge, Romito," which had four arches. Today, only one arch of the Romito—which once stretched across the Arno River—and the bridge's foundations on the opposite side of the riverbank remain.

“The distinctive form of the Arno along that stretch of territory corresponds to what Leonardo portrayed in the landscape to the left of the noblewoman depicted in the famous painting,” Vinceti said. The documents from the Medici family found in state archives in Florence showed that between 1501 and 1503, the bridge was a "very busy, functioning bridge." During that time, Da Vinci was in the Val d’Arno area and had worked at the pleasure of Cesare Borgia, a cardinal from a noble family in Renaissance Italy, and then for Piero Soderini, a statesman of the Republic of Florence. It was at this time that he painted the Mona Lisa in Florence.

The Romito di Laterina bridge was a shortcut to a town called Fiesole, where Da Vinci also stayed with an uncle who was a priest, and then to Florence, cutting travel times by 3 hours compared to other routes. Simona Neri, the Mayoress of Laterina, said Vinceti’s theory had caused the town of just over 3,500 people to be thrilled. “We need to try to protect what’s left of the bridge, which will require funding," she said, adding that the nearby town of Buriano, which boast about its bridge being in the Mona Lisa, and who have signposts up about the same, will be unhappy to hear the news. “There’ll be some rivalry; we’ll need to put a poster up, too,” quipped Neri.

“We really hope that this wonderful news will intrigue and fascinate local and foreign tourists, with the knowledge that it will be a great opportunity to relaunch the tourism of our territory on which we can work a lot starting from naturalistic, cultural and monumental valuation," Neri said at a press conference this month, reports CNN.

She added that a bike path is currently being developed in the area of the Romito Bridge to attract tourists. Today, the Mona Lisa is housed behind bulletproof glass at the Louvre in Paris and millions of tourists fly to France to see the masterpiece.