THE ARNO CYCLE PATH

The Arno cycle path in Casentino

The Arno has been a source of inspiration for several "pillars" of Italian literature: Dante Alighieri, Niccolò Machiavelli, Ugo Foscolo, Gabriele d'Annunzio, Dino Campana, Eugenio Montale, just to mention some of the main ones that span an arc of different centuries.
The river was certainly the inspiration for this simple publication, which is evident in the title. The Casentino and a part of the plain of Arezzo represent the first land bathed by that "river that originates in Falterona, and a hundred miles of corso non sazia" as Dante presents it in the 14th canto of Purgatory.
After descending quickly from the mountain, the Arno bathes or passes close to the villages of Stia, Pratovecchio, Poppi, Bibbiena, Rassina, Subbiano, Capolona. From here he enters the plain of Arezzo, but after a while, in the picturesque village of Giovi, he "twists his nose" (from the same song of the Divine Comedy) to the city to enter the Upper Valdarno after passing under that great medieval monument which is Buriano Bridge.
In the past, in the Casentino area, a road called “Via delle Pievi” ran along the right bank of the river. This, after touching the Pieve di Sietina, that of San Martino sopr’Arno, the Pieve di Socana and that of Buiano now near Poppi, headed for the well-known Romanesque churches of the upper Casentino.
Today these Romanesque churches and the villages between Stia and Arezzo, previously mentioned, are touched by a cycle-pedestrian path that runs a short distance from the river. The route, known as the Ciclopista dell’Arno, allows us to discover this beautiful area in an alternative way. Pedaling or walking among the greenery and in many places immersed in a silence broken only by the pleasant flow of water.