Questions about visiting the Casentino le domande, con risposta

The Casentino is the topmost valley of the river Arno, in the north-east corner of the province of Arezzo, in Tuscany. It sits between the Pratomagno ridge and the Apennine crest, about an hour east of Florence and half an hour north of Arezzo.

It helps a lot. The valley is rural and the best of it - the sanctuaries, the smaller villages, the sagre - is spread out and thinly served by buses. A little branch railway runs up the valley from Arezzo to Stia and is fine for reaching the main towns, but a car turns two days of logistics into two days of driving between villages.

By car, over the Passo della Consuma - about an hour of good mountain road that drops you straight into the head of the valley. By train you change at Arezzo onto the Casentino line. The full route, with the roads and the passes, is in the getting-here guide.

Autumn, if you have to pick one: from late September the beech woods turn and the chestnut sagre begin, village by village. Spring is quieter and the castles are open and empty. Summer fills the villages and the calendar with concerts and feasts; winter is for presepi and low walks. The valley does something different every season.

Two full days is the honest minimum: one for a castle and a village or two, one for a sanctuary. Two villages a day is the right pace - the pleasure here is in not rushing. A long weekend lets you add the wool museum at Stia or a walk in the forest.

A sagra is a village food festival, usually run by volunteers to raise money for the parish or a local association, built around one dish or ingredient in season. You sit at long shared tables, order at a hatch, and eat very well for very little. It is the cheapest good meal in the valley. The food guide explains how they work and what to order.

Tortello alla lastra, the filled pasta cooked on a hot stone; acquacotta, the old bread-and-vegetable soup; scottiglia, a slow stew of several meats; and once the weather turns, everything with chestnut in it - castagnaccio, polenta, flour. The grey pig of the Casentino, grigio del Casentino, is the local pork.

Every sagra we know about is in the calendar, in the order it happens, with its village and its dates. Filter your eye to the food tag, or open the guide for the village you are near. Small sagre move for the weather, so check the date before you drive.

The castle at Poppi, whole since the thirteenth century, with the plain of Campaldino below it where Dante fought. The two great sanctuaries above the valley: La Verna, where Francis received the stigmata in 1224, and Camaldoli, a thousand-year-old hermitage in the fir forest. The wool museum at Stia. And the forest itself, a national park.

Very. The Foreste Casentinesi national park is one of the best-preserved forests in Europe, laced with marked trails, from easy valley-floor walks to the Apennine crest. Spring and autumn are the seasons for it. Bring proper boots and check the weather - the mountain makes its own.

Yes. Castles to climb, woods to walk, farms and workshops, and a steady run of puppet shows, storytelling and family sagre. We keep a family-friendly view of the calendar that pulls out exactly those events, grouped by what they are.

In the main towns and the sanctuaries, often enough. In the smaller villages and at a sagra, less so - this is a working rural valley, not a resort. A few words of Italian and a smile go a long way, and are part of the pleasure.

Bring some. Many places take cards now, but plenty of small bars, sagre and village shops still prefer cash, and the sagra hatch almost always wants it. There are bank machines in the main towns.

Base yourself in or near one of the larger towns - Poppi, Bibbiena, Pratovecchio Stia - and drive out from there. Agriturismi in the hills are the local speciality and the reason many people come. If you are without a car, stay on the railway line.

Go Casentino is an independent, bilingual guide written locally. It is free, carries no sponsored listings, and every event is read by a person before it goes up. If you are organising something in the valley, send it to us and we will put it in the calendar.