Valleys & Hills
The most tourist-appealing factor of Casentino is its natural landscape and its geographical isolation. It’s surrounded by mountains with peaks as high as 1658 meters (mount Falco) covered with wide forests mostly inside the Foreste Casentinesi National Park. It is a perfect example of the environment of the Center of Italy. On the valley floor there are towns with interesting history; on the mountain sides there are the ruins of hundreds of castles with the villages named after them. From the grazing land to the beech woods, then the chestnut grove, the oak grove and plantations: this is the today’s result of an old sharecrop system on the Appennines. All of this is enhanced by an extraordinary amount of historical documents that explain every aspects of the development of the valley from before the XII century until nowadays.
In Casentino valley you can also find many points of interest, artistic and religious. Especially the Pieve di Romena, a Romanic church in Pratovecchio-Stia, and important religious centers such as the Sanctuary of La Verna, the Monastery of Camaldoli, the Hermitage of Camaldoli and the sanctuary-monastery of Santa Maria del Sasso in Bibbiena.
Valdichiana