Village guide Casentino, Arezzo, Italy
Castiglion Fibocchi
Masks and the edge of the valley
A small comune on the valley’s western edge, on the road between Arezzo and the Valdarno, with a compact old centre and a hill behind it. It is best known for a carnival of masked figures that is genuinely strange and entirely serious.
- Comune
- Castiglion Fibocchi
- Where
- Open in maps
What to see
- The old centre A tight medieval knot of stone streets that takes twenty minutes and repays them.
- The carnival masks The village’s masked carnival, with costumes made and remade over years, is one of the odder and better things in the province.
- The Pratomagno above The ridge starts climbing here, and the paths with it.
- The olive terraces The valley’s edge is warmer and lower, and it grows oil.
What to eat
Olive oil that has not travelled, and Aretine cooking with the volume turned up.
When to come
Carnival, if the dates fall right. Otherwise any spring day, on the way in or out of the valley.
The masks are not folklore staged for visitors: they are made by the people who wear them, and they take it personally.