Know the valley Casentino, Arezzo, Italy
Plan a visit: a day, a weekend, or longer
However long you have, here is how to actually see the valley.
The Casentino is small, close-knit and gloriously badly signposted, which means a little planning goes a long way. This is the practical version of the whole site: how to spend a day, a weekend or longer, what to do when it rains, and how to hang the whole trip on whatever the valley happens to be celebrating while you are here.
One day, if that is all you have
Start in Poppi. The castle of the Guidi counts opens mid-morning and is the one thing not to skip: a whole medieval keep, a frescoed chapel, and the best view in the valley from the top of the tower. Eat lunch under the porticoes in the old town.
Spend the afternoon on one of the two great sanctuaries above the valley - La Verna if you want the drama of the cliff where Francis received the stigmata, Camaldoli if you want the forest and the monks’ old pharmacy. You will not do both justice in a day, so choose one. The whole valley runs along a single road up the middle, and you are never more than forty minutes from where you woke up.
A weekend, done properly
Give the north its own morning. Stia still makes the orange-and-blue Casentino cloth in a mill you can visit, and the Romanesque pieve at Romena is a few minutes away, plain and very old. Pratovecchio and the tower at Porciano fill the rest of the morning. Eat where the locals eat, and do not hurry it.
Keep the sanctuaries for the second day, when the drive is behind you. La Verna and Camaldoli sit on opposite shoulders of the valley, an hour apart, and each is worth a couple of unhurried hours. Between them, drop into a chestnut village such as Raggiolo or Corezzo, and if a sagra is on, dinner is sorted. If you have a third day, give it to the trails and to the smaller comuni - Talla, Chitignano, Castel Focognano - the places nobody thinks to tell you about.
A wet day, or a slow one
- The castle at Poppi Mostly indoors, and worth an hour in any weather. The frescoed chapel alone earns the ticket.
- The wool mill at Stia The museum of the Casentino cloth, warm and dry, and the shop sells the real thing by the metre.
- La Verna in the cloud Low cloud on the mountain is not a loss - the mist is half the point. Bring a coat and go anyway.
- The Antica Farmacia at Camaldoli The monks’ old pharmacy, still selling what the forest makes. A good half-hour out of the rain.
- A long lunch The honest Casentino answer to bad weather. Order the scottiglia and let the afternoon go.
Build it around what is on
The valley keeps its own calendar, and the single best tip for a visit is to read it before you fix your dates. A sagra, a patronal feast, a market or a concert in a cloister will show you more of the place in one evening than a morning of monuments. Here is what is coming up next.
- Naturalmente Pianoforte 2026
- Naturalmente Pianoforte festival
- Naturalmente Pianoforte: night concert
- Archaeology night guided visit
- Naturalmente Pianoforte: talks
- Tribute to Lucio Battisti
You can drive the length of the Casentino in under an hour. Seeing it properly takes a great deal longer, which is exactly the point.
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