The magic of autumn colors in Casentino

The Fall Foliage colors the entire Casentino valley thanks to the ridges that surround it. 

The Pratomagno massif and the Casentino Forests, Mount Falterona and Campigna National Park provide a multicolored landscape of a thousand colors. The small villages nestled on the slopes become ideal places for walks and hikes on the surrounding trails. Not to be missed are places like Raggiolo, Talla, Moggiona and finally Castel Focognano and Carda. Many of these places are characterized by the culture and harvesting of the chestnut and offer characteristic events to learn about it and taste it. 

The Alpe di Catenaia connects many places in the valley such as Chitignano and Subbiano, and here it is possible to take trails surrounded by foliage.

Leaving the road of Casentino valley floor near Bibbiena to take provincial road 64, one enters the valley of the Teggina stream, which has its source immediately below the Pratomagno meadows and flows into the Arno after a 15-kilometer journey.

As you travel along the valley, hill profiles flow before your eyes, gently chasing one another, overlapping each other until, having passed the villages of San Piero and Ortignano, the road becomes steeper and the landscape more mountainous, reaching Raggiolo, one of the most beautiful villages in Italy, at the confluence of the Teggina and the Barbozzaia; a little higher at an altitude of 600 meters, the road ends in the beautiful Piazza San Michele from which you can access the parish church rich in important works of art.

All seasons are good for climbing up here, but autumn, with its magical impressionistic brushstrokes, enhances the rupestrian characters of the village by juxtaposing the gray stone of the houses with the thousands of colors of the chestnut grove that, especially on sunny October days, immerses the visitor in a fairy-tale atmosphere.

The queen of autumn is the chestnut nicknamed “the bread tree”, because for a long time it was one of the main sources of food for the community. For this reason, Raggiolo is home to the Ecomuseum of the Chestnut and Transhumance and in autumn the Raggiolo Brigade, an association that has been committed to enhancing the culture and history of Raggiolo for 30 years, organizes the Chestnut Harvesting Festival. On this occasion, guided tours of the village are organized during which it is possible to visit the Cavallari drying kiln and the Morino watermill, historical artifacts of great value that are in an excellent state of preservation. The economy, culture and traditions around this forest fruit have been of such importance that they have been referred to as the chestnut civilization of which there is a representation in the "community map" visible in the Ecomuseum's Interpretation Center.