The town is generally reached from Talla by climbing for just over seven kilometers.
The climb is quite challenging with an average of 7/8 percent and peaks of 10 percent, but the luxuriant vegetation and the views will repay you for this effort.
Generally this choice is made to reach the PANORAMIC road that overlooks the Valdarno without passing through the Passo della Crocina, which is busier and if there is wind, this stretch is more sheltered.
Before this town we meet, after 4.5 kilometers, the small village of Pieve di Pontenano.
Returning to the municipal road in about three kilometers we reach Pontenano, at almost 800 meters above sea level. There is no historical documentation that mentions the origins of this place, but it is believed certain that it arose on a barbarian settlement dating back to the VII - VIII century. Due to its dominant position over a vast territory below, it had a great strategic importance and this justifies the presence, since the 11th century, of a powerful castle built by the Bishops of Arezzo. One of the strongest in Pratomagno so much so that a chronicle of 1385, a period in which the area passed under the Florentine dominion, speaks of as many as two hundred armed men present in this place. It is also remembered that here there was a production of weapons destined for Arezzo, this could lead to the deduction of the presence in the area of small iron mines, a significant value for the time. Passed under the control of Florence, in 1426 the Tuscan city was forced to completely destroy the castle due to the insubordination of its indomitable inhabitants.
photo and information source: ilbelcasentino.it edited by A. FERRINI
Translated by Google •
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