Throughout the Casentino, Dante himself can be our guide. Few regions in Italy are so deeply intertwined with the divine poet; apart from Florence and Ravenna, there is perhaps no other place where the Divina Commedia serves so often as a companion.

With the Inferno in hand, we search for Count Alessandro’s castle of Romena and the site believed to be the Fonte Branda, below the castle to the left. Its waters—capable, as Dante writes, of cooling even the thirst of Hell—were not worth to Maestro Adamo the sight of his seducer sharing his torment. With the Purgatorio, we follow the Arno from its source on Falterona, where it begins as a mere fiumicello, down past Porciano and Poppi, turning away from the Aretines “in disdain.”

Tradition holds that Dante was once imprisoned in the castle of Porciano. We know he was received at various times by members of the Conti Guidi during his exile. It was likely from one of their strongholds, probably Poppi, that he sent his two fierce letters—on March 31 and April 16, 1311—to the Florentine government and to Emperor Henry. In the Casentino, too, he composed the canzone Amor, dacche convien pur ch'io mi doglia, one of his last and most enigmatic lyrics.

The Battlefield of Campaldino

Beyond Poppi, on the eastern bank of the Arno, lies the field of Campaldino, near the former convent and church of Certomondo—founded a few decades earlier by two members of the Conti Guidi to commemorate the Ghibelline victory at Montaperti. Here, however, the Guelfs would prevail.

In 1289, the Aretines—led by their bishop and by Buonconte da Montefeltro—advanced up the valley toward Bibbiena, hoping to counter the Florentines and their French allies, who had crossed the mountains above Pratovecchio and were devastating Guidi territory. On the Feast of St. Barnabas, the two armies met. Dante, serving in the Florentine light cavalry, later recalled—if the fragment preserved by Leonardo Bruni is authentic—that he “had much dread, and at the end the greatest gladness, by reason of the varying chances of that battle.”

Little remains at Certomondo today: only a small part of the cloisters and a church containing an Annunciation by Neri di Bicci. Yet about an hour’s walk from the battlefield, near the confluence of the Archiano with the Arno, lies a place deeply sacred to admirers of Dante. Here, on that same terrible day, Buonconte da Montefeltro died by the riverside, murmuring the name of Mary. The nightingales still sing in the evening, but their voices pale beside the immortal stanzas of Purgatorio V, where Dante erected an eternal monument to the young Ghibelline warrior.

Sanctuaries of the Casentino

Beyond its castles and its Dantesque memories, the Casentino is sanctified by the great monastic sites of Vallombrosa, Camaldoli, and La Verna. Less famous, yet compelling, is the Dominican church and convent of Madonna del Sasso, situated below Bibbiena on the road to La Verna—rich in connections to Savonarola and the Piagnoni, and still a place of pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Rock. Its church contains a fine Assumption painted by Fra Paolino after a cartoon by Fra Bartolommeo. Vallombrosa and Camaldoli, founded respectively by Giovanni Gualberto and Romualdus, have shared the fate of most such institutions in modern Italy.

La Verna, however, remains untouched—that “harsh rock between Tiber and Arno,” where Francis received “the final seal” from Christ. On that September dawn, the mountain blazed with divine light, as the crucified Seraph pronounced the mystical words: Tu sei il mio Gonfaloniere — “You are my standard-bearer.” Passing beneath the arch carved between the rocks and entering this sacred precinct is like stepping directly into the spirit of the Divina Commedia.

Non est in toto sanctior orbe mons.

Here, at least, is a place where, despite the tides of Renaissance, Reformation, Revolution, and Risorgimento, the Middle Ages remain vividly alive in their noblest form, kept by the poverelli of the Seraphic Father. The mystical radiance that shone on the day of the Stigmata still endures, “while the eternal ages watch and wait.”