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 © Photo: Andrea Barghi |
Castel San NiccolÚ
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| A national trade fair,
scores of stone-dressers, quarries of valuable stone.
These elements might already be enough but there’s
more: Strada is truly the village of stone. But first an explanation. When people say ‘stone’ in Casentino, and in much of Tuscany, they mean blue-grey sandstone, pietra serena, quartz crystals bonded by clay. Throughout the world, the Tuscan landscape is associated with the colour, warmth, and naturalness of this material, and the village of Strada has all the credentials to be part of the picture. The village is located along the Solano torrent, in a valley that lies transversally to the course of the Arno where the strada, the road going up the Pratomagno towards Florence and the Valdarno once led. When the new road was laid out further uphill in the days of the Grand Duchy, the village inevitably became less important. Today Strada is a peaceful locality that displays its face with naturalness. A face of stone, of course. |
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On the right of the Solano, high up on a rocky spur, is the Castello di San NiccolÚ, a Guidi stronghold. A few hundred metres below, an old walkway leads to the mills and a bridge across the stream. Never abandoning us for an instant, stone accompanies us up the steps to the flagged square in the middle of the village... |
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| Here the old buildings and
the Chapel of the Visitation (which preserves an
interesting stone altar) provide the setting for the
public space, where the logge del grano
(grain-stores) are located, with their elegant squared
stone blocks. At the rear of the piazza, Via del Teatro leads to the houses of the old popular quarter, built with local stone and protected by a wall thrown up in 1745 to hem in the Solano after a catastrophic flood, still remembered with awe. The men who lived here no doubt worked meagre fields like those on the slope opposite the castle, mysteriously called ‘la spagna’. Carved into the stones of the loose-laid walls that still hold up the earth and on the lintels of the abandoned houses are the dates of the years that, towards the end of the 18th century, saw the realisation of those works that give the Solano valley its characteristic appearance. Following the torrent upstream, beyond the hamlet of Prato, one enters a world apart, a series of valleys and smaller valleys, each one a microcosm. Cetica, Battifolle, Caiano, Ristonchi, Garliano, Pagliericcio and Rifiglio offer churches and ruined fortifications, but especially an environment and a pace of life that have long since disappeared elsewhere. On the spur between the Arno and the Solano stands Borgo alla Collina, another castle of the Guidi dynasty, while just outside Strada is a splendid pieve, San Martino in Vado. Inside, in strong, symbolic language, medieval man left his spiritual horizon carved in the stone of the capitals. |
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