A calendar for one valley.

Go Casentino is an independent, bilingual guide to events and things to do in the Casentino — the first valley of the Arno, between the Pratomagno and the Foreste Casentinesi. It is written here, in the valley, by people who go to the things they list.

The valley’s events already exist; what has never existed is one place to find them. They live on parish noticeboards, on a Pro Loco’s Facebook page, on a photocopied poster taped to the bar window in Soci. If you don’t already know, you don’t find out. This site is the answer to that, and nothing else: what’s on, where, in the order it happens.

Who it’s for per chi

For the visitor with a week in a rented house near Poppi who would rather eat tortelli at a village sagra than in a restaurant on the ring road. For the walker who wants to know that the beech woods turn in the third week of October and that a ranger is going in on the Sunday. And, just as much, for the people who live here — because a valley of thirteen comuni doesn’t automatically know what the next comune is doing on Saturday.

English first, because the visitor needs the help. But the Italian name of a sagra is the real name, and we keep it — with a short English line underneath, never a marketing translation.

How we work come lavoriamo

• 01

  No sponsored listings. Nobody can pay to appear, to appear higher, or to appear first. There is no advertising on this site.

• 02

  No affiliate links. We don’t take a cut of a hotel booking or a ticket. If we recommend a place, that’s all it is.

• 03

  Every listing is read by a person. Submissions are checked before they go up, and we write to the organiser when a date looks wrong.

• 04

  We say when we don’t know. Small sagre move for the weather. Where a date is provisional, the listing says so.

The valley la valle

The Casentino is the quiet corner of Tuscany that the coaches drive past on their way to Siena. Dante fought here, at Campaldino, and wrote about the river afterwards; the Franciscans have been at La Verna since 1213 and the Benedictines at Camaldoli for longer. In between there are chestnut woods, a wool town that still makes cloth, castles that were never prettified, and about thirty villages where the whole summer is organised around one weekend with a field kitchen in it.

That last part is the reason this site exists. The calendar is the product; everything else here is just an explanation of it.