アウッラのおすすめツーリングルート

When we passed by 🚴🏻‍♂️, work in progress 🚧 made access impossible 🚳.

Medici Fountain

This place is characterized by a depression on the stream that over the years has created a real basin with crystal clear waters. Once you reach the stream you will find two fairly large but low pools, if you continue down the stream you will find the waterfalls and even further down the basin, near an ancient stone building right on the river.

to Malaspina Castle, where today you can visit the porticoed courtyard. A marble shield with a lion and two branches of Spino Secco, the family crest, welcomes you. Once you enter the loggia, a double staircase leads to the two wings of the castle: on one side, the noble rooms dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on the other, in the direction of the Apennines and the village of Bagnone, the defense tower from which you can enjoy a wide view of the entire valley. Today, a small passage that the inhabitants call “riulin”, ravelin, allows you to go along the tower and the defense system facing the mountains and leave the village in the direction of the small sanctuary of the Madonna della Neve.

Bagnone Castle is located on the highest hill and is clearly visible as soon as you enter the town. It is dominated by an imposing cylindrical stone tower, crowned by corbels of the plumbing system with archers and larger openings framed by frames. The tower remains the only surviving structure of the castle, which has now completely disappeared and is partly incorporated into smaller buildings of the villa of the Counts Ruschi-Noceti. The castle is privately owned and cannot be visited.

The Borgo di Bagnone is a medieval village on the Tuscan-Emilian pre-Apennine hillsides. It is characterized by the waterfalls that flow on the right side of the village, formed in the rock by the flow of the Bagnone Torrent. The oldest part of the village stands on the left side of the Bagnone Torrent, from which it took its name. The circular tower located in this area of the village served to control the valley's traffic and was connected to other similar towers: Malgrate, Groppoli and Mulazzo.

Called the town of a hundred villages, for the numerous hamlets that compose it, it has ancient origins even if it acquired importance first with the Malaspina family in the Middle Ages and then with the Medici in the Renaissance, the latter called it the 'beautiful corner of Florence. It preserves an important historical center, protected and enclosed by the Medici walls, erected by Cosimo I in 1540, where there is a succession of noble palaces that flow into the Medici square, characterized by the elegant baroque fountain in marble and pietra serena, which overlooks the church dedicated to Saints James the Apostle and Anthony from the 14th century and enlarged in the 16th, with three naves marked by sandstone columns and with inside a beautiful baptismal font bearing the coat of arms of the Spino Fiorito of the Malaspina.

The path passes for a few hundred meters along the bottom of the stream, which is best avoided by bike if you don't want to get a foot bath.