Pontremoli, Lunigiana, Italy

We recently returned from a 4 night stay in this fantastic village and fell in love with it. This area of northernmost Tuscany is virtually undiscovered by Americans, but tourism is growing for Europeans in this area.

A little background on how we found the place. In 2009 we were traveling by train from the Cinque Terre to Bologna and sat with a Brit who lives in this area known as Lunigiana. He told us about the dozens (maybe hundreds) of castles in this area. I did some Google Streetview searches and became intrigued. In particular the village of Pontremoli caught my eye. It's a fairly large village situated between a branch in the river surrounded by mountains. It took us ten years but we planned our visit and layed out a rough itinerary.

To my knowledge there are no hotels in the city, maybe a few small pensione. We found an apartment off of Airbnb, and very reasonable. There are two main piazze (plazas) in the centro and one main shopping street which evenually leads to the castle at the top of the hill. Of course most of the new section of the town is modern but the centro is very old. There are half a dozen bridges over the two river branches. One of them is part of the ancient Via Francigena, a historic pilgrimage trail that ends in Rome. That bridge dates, I believe to the 13th century. There is a beautiful park below it at the confluence of the river.

The castle at the top of the hill is Piagnaro castle, originally built in 1253 and fortified in the 1700's. The castle hosts a museum which features the ancient "Stelle" statues. Some of these statues pre-date the Etruscans and date as far back as 7000 years. Iron age!!! More recent statues date to 600 BC. The castle and museum can be toured in less than 90 minutes. Well worth it!

As a tourist you can appreciate the easy going style of the locals, a half dozen really great restaurants, including a 1st class brewpub (Taverna Nani), and a couple of excellent bakeries. Pontremoli is also a handy base to explore the many villages and castles. It is as I mentioned, Pontremoli is at the extreme northern end of Tuscany. If you head south along the A15 highway which leads to La Spezia, you can reach many of villages quiet easily. We got off the main road though and took the windey narrow roads into the hills. The villages of Bagnone, Villafranca, Licciana Nardi, Fivizzano, and especially Fosdinovo are fantastic. A little farther south in the nearby Ligurian province are the villages of Castlenuovo, Ortonovo, and Nicola. All with castles. We toured 4 castles on our two road trips we took, and walked around a couple of others that were closed to the public. The best of all of them is Malaspina Castle in the beautiful hilltop village of Fosdinovo. This is about a 45 minute drive down A15, then another 15 minutes on the road up the hill. It's beautiful country, so travel is no problem. Malaspina castle offers tours, and will intrigue you with it's incredible history, tales of murder, secret passages & trap doors, and ghosts (a walled up up skeletin was discovered in the 1940's). We also enjoyed the Malgrate castle & Bagnone castle.

Not much English spoken in this area, but everyone is welcoming and friendly. This is a true Italian Backdoor, as Rick calls it.