Know the valley Casentino, Arezzo, Italy
The wild Casentino
Two mountains, one of the oldest forests in Europe.
Half of what makes the Casentino is not in its villages at all, but in the woods above them. The valley sits inside one of the largest and oldest forests in Italy, and faces, across the Arno, a long grass mountain with a cross on the top. This is the green half of the place: what grows here, what lives here, and how to get in among it without a rope or a map you cannot read.
Two mountains, two woods
The Casentino is held between two very different heights. On the east and north stands the Parco Nazionale delle Foreste Casentinesi, Monte Falterona e Campigna, a wall of ancient forest that runs along the Apennine crest into Romagna. On the west lies the Pratomagno, a long bald ridge of grass and chestnut that separates the valley from the Arno plain. One is deep shade and silver fir; the other is open sky and a famous iron cross on the top. Between them the Arno is born, high on Falterona, as a trickle you can step over.
The oldest forest in Italy
Inside the national park, above Camaldoli, is the Riserva Integrale di Sasso Fratino. It has been left completely alone since 1959, the first strict reserve in the country, and in 2017 UNESCO added it to its World Heritage list of ancient beech forests. Some of the beeches and silver firs here are more than five hundred years old. You cannot walk into the core of it, and that is the point, but the forest all around it, tended by the Camaldoli monks for a thousand years, is open and astonishing.
Deer, wolves and the September rut
The park is one of the best places in Italy to hear red deer. Through September the stags bell across the valleys at dusk, a sound called the bramito, and the park runs guided evenings to listen for it. Wolves are back and doing well, though you will almost certainly never see one; wild boar, roe deer and, higher up, the odd golden eagle are easier. Keep the evening for the animals and the middle of the day for the light through the beeches.
Out on the trails
You do not need to be a serious walker. Marked paths link the sanctuaries at Camaldoli and La Verna, old mule tracks run between the castles lower down, and the park visitor centres at Badia Prataglia, Stia and Chiusi della Verna hand out maps and mark what is open. Here is what is happening outdoors in the valley now.
- Firefly night at the Bosco delle Fate, La Verna
- Pilates and snack at Camaldoli
- Scottiglia trail
- Guided walk
- Kids on bikes
- Kids on bikes
The river Arno rises on Monte Falterona at about 1,350 metres and is small enough near the source to jump across. By Florence, forty kilometres downstream, it is the wide river of the postcards.