Village guide Casentino, Arezzo, Italy
Poppi
The castle you can see from the whole valley
Poppi is the picture the Casentino puts on its postcards, and for once the postcard is right. A castle stands on the hill with the valley laid flat around it, and underneath it a village of stone porticoes climbs the slope. You can walk the whole of it in an hour. It deserves an afternoon.
- Comune
- Poppi
- Where
- Open in maps
What to see
- The Castello dei Conti Guidi Begun in the 13th century and still whole: a courtyard of staircases and coats of arms, a chapel frescoed by Taddeo Gaddi, and a tower you can climb for the best view in the valley.
- The plain of Campaldino Flat farmland below the castle. In 1289 the Ghibellines of Arezzo and the Guelphs of Florence fought here, and a young man called Dante Alighieri rode with the Florentine cavalry.
- The porticoes The long arcaded street of the old town, built to keep the rain off, still doing it.
- Camaldoli Up in the fir forest above Poppi, a hermitage and a monastery founded around 1012 by Saint Romuald. The monks have been managing the forest for a thousand years, which is why it is still there.
What to eat
Tortelli di patate, the valley’s own filled pasta, and anything with chestnut in it once the weather turns. The bars under the porticoes do a proper afternoon.
When to come
Spring, when the castle is open and empty. Autumn, when the woods behind it go copper and the chestnut sagre start.
Dante almost certainly saw this valley from a horse before he ever saw it from a page. He put the Casentino, and its river, into the Inferno.