Garfagnana: an ideal destination in Tuscany

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15 September 2017

Garfagnana: the ideal destination in Tuscany

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In the northernmost part of the province of Lucca, between the Apuan Alps and the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, Garfagnana offers a unique scenery in the Tuscan landscape. Its woods, very green in summer, explode in the thousand fairy-tale colours of autumn already in September, month of chestnuts, one of the typical products of this land. Nature lovers and excursionists appreciate this valley that rises from 190 m a.s.l. of the town of Gallicano town to 2054 m a.s.l. at the top of Monte Prado, the highest mountain in Tuscany, located inside the Parco dell’Orecchiella, on the Apennine side of the valley. In the Apuan Alps, the Pania della Croce (1858 m a.s.l.) offers the visitor a wonderful view of the western part of Touscany: Monviso, the Gulf of La Spezia, Corsica, Elba Island, Mount Amiata. With the help of binoculars, you can even see Giotto’s bell tower in Florence.

In the villages of the valley time seems to have stopped between the ancient stones of medieval and Renaissance fortifications. The Verrucole Fortress, in the municipality of San Romano in Garfagnana, and the Fortress of Mont’ Alfonso, in the municipality of Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, the capital of the valley, encourage the tourist to discover a remote time.

The Garfagnana is a quaint land that offers its visitors not only wonderful landscapes. In the numerous restaurants of the valley, it is possible to taste the typical products of this land that the poet Giovanni Pascoli called “valley of beauty and goodness”. Chestnuts, mushrooms, spelt, salami and cold cuts, cheese, quiches are the main dishes of the local cuisine. Autumn is the season in which you can admire the thousand coulours of the landscape of Garfagnana- the dream of photographers! – but is also the season of chestnuts and cep mushrooms, which can be tasted in their countless ways of preparation in all the villages of this beautiful territory, restaurants and village festivals.

Garfagnana is the ideal destination for people who want to visit a land surrounded by nature, where the beauty of the landscape, between breathtaking mountain views and villages suspended in time, is combined with the goodness of a traditional cuisine based on the delicacy of its typical products.