Neither completely isolated from the rest of the region, nor at the centre of much traffic (as, instead, was the zone travelled by the great medieval road known as the francigena or Roman Way), this zone nevertheless had its own vitality and its not irrelevant dissemination of more or less large inhabited centres: villages, little villages, scattered houses, and churches. Already at the end of the Middle Ages, at an overall glance, all the territory of Loro would appear as one profoundly marked by the hand of man and, perhaps, when the season was good and the rains did not swell its torrents, it was relatively easy to travel. Moreover, at least until the 17th century, it maintained unaltered these features, as regards both the population and also religious and civil building.

Loro was the first fief of a marquis given to Piero Capponi by Ferdinando II in 1646. Towards the end of the 18th century, the appearance of the Loro countryside was not very different with respect to two centuries earlier: the main centre had grown around an original nucleus constituted all around the castle and then extended also beyond the Ciuffenna torrent, crossed by a bridge with a single arch.

During that same time, also the Poggio di Loro had maintained its ancient features, just as had the castle of Trappola and the Rocca Guicciarda. This inertia in architecture reflected a more general situation that was not a particularly happy one. However, it was to be these conditions that would produce one of the most important social sub-movements that occurred in 18th-century Tuscany (the so-called "Viva Maria" ), that involved the zone of the Upper Valdarno and the territory of Loro among its protagonists.
In fact, starting from the last twenty years of the 18th century, gross dissatisfaction -combined with desperation because of the increase in the prices of food stuffs and grain - caused a revolution to break out in Arezzo, thus forcing a reduction in the price of grain and also of bread. At the news other revolts inflamed the populace in various villages of the province: at Loro, where it seems that the protest was particularly animated, there were those who "apostrophised with pride the Vicar of San Giovanni: 'here we are in France, at Arezzo we are in Tuscany, because we have to pay the price we want for grain', and therefore 70 persons requested grain 'at Arezzo prices', obtaining 8 Lire per bushel" (Turi, 1969: 91-92).
The protest at Loro was not a completely casual fact: Loro and the upper Valdarno were in fact also the epicentre of the insurgence of the rebellions of April '99. On 29 April, the "tree of freedom" in Terranuova Bracciolini was set on fire; on May 1st, a sign containing threats to the Jacobins was put up in Montevarchi; and on June 2nd, the "tree of freedom" in Loro was cut down. The sacristan of a Confraternity of Loro has left us an illuminating testimony on the clerical side of these happenings that badly upset the community.
A little order was restored by the French authorities in the upper Valdarno only at the beginning of May. After the short parenthesis of regional government being entrusted by the French to the son of the Duke of Parma, Ludovico I, who assumed the title of King of Etruria, Tuscany was admitted to the empire in 1807. But also after that date, other disorders broke out in Loro "to calm which, it was necessary to resort to sending in a good contingent of troops", whose provisioning was paid for by the municipal administration, that had to spend 3719 francs and 91 centesimi (Manneschi, 1921: 81).
The following year, the Maire of the community of Loro was assigned to compile a detailed report for the central government. This report (probably written by Giuseppe Nannini Gini) already showed a more tranquil society that seems to have rapidly metabolised and partly dismissed the previous years of turbulence and tribulations. There were no longer the old fears of the past, there was no hunger, no famine, no social disorder, insecurity. In their place, a series of "problems" found room on the background of a landscape traced in chiaroscuro. So, the village re-appears to us no longer animated by an alarmed populace meeting in church accompanied by shouts of "Viva Maria", but rather busy like a neat little country village. There were indeed problems: the maire identified above all three of a structural kind. These were the senseless plundering of the mountains in order to obtain wood, the bad condition of the roads and the disciplining of hunting.
The maire's report consigns to the 20th century an image of Loro that is sufficiently variegated: the mentions of men of culture, of the history of the town together with certain potentially exploitable resources: the mountain for wood, stock-raising, the olive groves…. There remains a single attempt at painting a picture of a complex community, one that is many-sided and problematical. But from then on, no structural provision changed the condition of the people of Loro, at least until the Unity of Italy was accomplished - when the first real innovations in the economic field were registered in the zone.