Casentino

Poppi is the historic capital of an ancient region of Tuscany, the Casentino: a wide, oval-shaped valley carved by the first reach of the Arno river and ringed by mountains.

CENTRO DI CULTURA
ITALIANA CASENTINO
Scuola di Italiano
per stranieri

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The highest peaks are formed by Mount Falterona, the Pratomagno, which separates the Casentino from the Chianti region, and the mount of La Verna, which separates it from the upper Tiber valley. For 500 years the Casentino was the private domain of a great feudal family. In 1440 it was annexed to Florence, which administered the region through one of its governors. Due to its geographical position and to its history, the Casentino has always remained an island in the heart of central Italy.

Even today, although it is less than 50 km. from Florence, few people know of it, even among the Italians themselves. No highways or long-distance railways cross it. It is difficult to "pass through" the Casentino by chance: you must want to get there. The mountains that ring the valley encompass the largest forests on the Italian peninsula: this too is a legacy of its long isolation, as is the presence of deer, badgers, wolves and many other wild animal species. Today the forests of the Casentino form a National Park that is among the largest in Italy. Even in their daily speech the casentinesi speak a pure, classical Tuscan that retains a touch of the archaic, a reminder of the ancient dialect in which Dante wrote his Divine Comedy.


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