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The trades of the woods
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| The village of
Montemignaio, clusters of houses scattered along the side
of the Solano valley, which leads up to the Consuma Pass,
is the administrative centre of one of Tuscany’s
smallest communes. A tourist locality snuggled in the
green of oaks and chestnuts, it speaks to us, through the
gnarled hands of its inhabitants, of a life of toil in
the woods, for centuries the area’s main resource. Teams of wood-cutters, drivers and charcoal-makers from Montemignaio have always shaped the forest landscape of the Casentino district, even venturing into places as far afield as Lazio and Sardinia. Seasonal work was the only way to cope with the harsh realities of this rugged mountainous terrain. Over time, generation after generation, the work they did became more specialised, and demand grew for the loggers and charcoal-makers of this tiny town. Even today, together with tourism in the summertime, trees - now firs planted in nurseries - continue to represent an important occupation for its inhabitants. |
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 © Photo: Andrea Barghi |
Not surprisingly, therefore, the motifs that decorate the capitals and piers of the Romanesque pieve of Santa Maria Assunta are mainly plant shapes, imitating in a stylised but effective manner the characteristics and forms of the local flora. |
| As in nearly all the
villages of the Casentino, the church has its
counterpoint in the castle, the administrative centre,
located at the top of a hill that has been entirely
terraced. Of the ancient Castel Leone, ceded to the
Counts Guidi in 1191 by Federico Barbarossa, important
vestiges remain, including a few stretches of outer wall
and one of the two towers that flanked the main entrance.
At its peak, a bell (still preserved inside), which
Simone Guidi da Battifolle had cast in 1332, made its
voice heard for centuries, calling the peasants in from
the countryside in times of danger. Near the village, along the old mule track that climbed up to the pass, we find the Oratory of Santa Maria delle Calle, probably built on an ancient site where sheep were counted when they were being moved to new pastures, as the name of the place seems to indicate. Back in town, a road leads up from the houses clustered around the castle to the hamlet of Campiano, from which one can reach the grasslands of the Pratomagno and, descending the Florentine side, the imposing Abbey of Vallombrosa. |
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