Village guide Casentino, Arezzo, Italy
Chitignano
Gunpowder, tobacco and mineral water
A tiny comune on the eastern slope with an unusually disreputable past. Chitignano made gunpowder and smuggled tobacco, and rather than hide it, the village keeps a museum about it. There are mineral springs here too, which is the more respectable half of the story.
- Comune
- Chitignano
- Where
- Open in maps
What to see
- The museum of gunpowder and smuggling Small, specific, and entirely unashamed. The trade was illegal, local, and for a long time the only cash in the village.
- The Ubertini castle The old seat of the counts who ran this corner, above the houses.
- The mineral springs Naturally sparkling and faintly sulphurous water, which people have been drinking on purpose for a very long time.
- The woods Chestnut and oak, and paths that see almost nobody.
What to eat
Chestnut, again and properly. This is a village that fed itself off its own hillside within living memory.
When to come
Autumn, for the woods and the chestnut. Bring a car: there is no other way here and that is rather the point.
The gunpowder was made with charcoal from the chestnut woods above the village. Everything here came from the same hillside, including the trouble.