Talla

Talla is the town of music, the place where Guido Monaco was born. A visit to Castellaccia and the Ecomuseum dedicated to him is worth including in every itinerary. Talla is a well-kept mountain town and a wonderful place to explore; from its town centre to the many little villages that you come across dotted around its mountainside, such as Pontenano and Faltona. An absolute must is a visit to the ancient Abbey of ‘Santa Trinita in Alpe’, which can also be reached from Pontenano, where the ruins ‘whisper and pray’ amidst a strong and silent landscape. A trip to Talla is also a tour for the taste buds: there is a dairy farm there that has a long history of making excellent pecorino and you can also buy chestnuts and flour, and sample the delicious polenta at the festival of Faltona.

HISTORIC CENTRE

Talla is a small mountain town perched on the cliff that rises over the meeting point of the ‘Fosso Lavanzone’ and the ‘Torrente di Capraia’. From after the war until now, the town has been almost totally dedicated to the cultivation of chestnuts, which have provided a means of sustenance for its inhabitants for a long time.

Dairy farming is also well developed, and there is an important dairy farm here, the ‘Cooperativa Zootecnica del Pratomagno’, which produces excellent pecorino that is sold all across Tuscany. The symbol of the town is the ‘Castellaccia’ borough, the original centre of the region. ‘Castellaccia’ is one of the ‘antennae’ locations of the Music Ecomuseum. The tradition was started here by the birth of Guido Monaco or Guido d’Arezzo in around 997. Guido was an exceptional music theorist and invented essential perfections in musical score writing. By discovering how to distinguish the sounds of the hexachord, he used the first syllables of the six hemistichs to design the Gregorian Chant. The method invented by Guido Monaco, known as ‘Solmisation’, enables singers to get in tune when sight-reading reading music and therefore familiarize themselves with unknown songs.

The attractive village of Santo Bagnena is very pretty with its small church of ‘San Michele’, as well as the rural village of Bicciano which is on the slopes of Pratomagno where they extend down to Santa Mama.

WHAT TO SEE

The most important architectural gem of the Talla region is definitely the ‘Badia di Santa Trinita in Alpe’. Under mount Lori, at a height of 952m, at the top of the valley which the ‘Fosso di Capraia’ runs through, are the remains of the ‘Badia di Santa Trinita in Alpe’. It was founded at the time of Ottone I of Saxony, and is very likely to have been built along the path of an old Roman road that led from ‘Valdarno di Sopra’ to Casentino. The road known as ‘Abaversa’ actually led up towards Pratomagno from the Abbey. One of the easiest routes to reach the the Abbey is from Pontenano where a dirt track, which winds through the forest, leads to ‘Fonte Cavallari’, then through some chestnut trees to the Abbey. The first records of the Abbey, with its walls that rise up amongst the chestnut trees and ancient fir trees, are from before the year 1000. According to reports by the Camaldoli Annals, between the years 950 and 961, two German Benedictine monks, Eriprando and Pietro, retreated as hermits on this mountain where they founded a lodge near the spring called ‘Fonte Benedetta’.

Of interest to nature lovers and those who like walking in the woods is the village of Capraia, the starting point of many paths that lead to Pratomagno, Faltona, the town of the polenta festival, and Castelvecchio.