I presume that foreigners carrying knapsacks for their convenience do not often walk in these parts. We had been accosted before and asked what our roba was, and women especially joined us along the road in hopes of driving a bargain in needles and scissors. In the valley of the Solano our appearance brought concern to the heart of a professional pedlar, who eyed us askance. When we came down the valley again in the afternoon we were met by a woman, who told us she had been looking out for us ever since we went past in the morning; might she see our wares? She too looked upon us as rivals of the pedlar.
We found the narrow, tortuous valley of the Solano oppressive and unattractive, and we did not penetrate much beyond Strada San Niccolo, a town of high houses built close between the mountain sides. Here too the history of many centuries lay condensed, as it were, in a nutshell. The ancient church near the castle, now deserted—the ruins of the castle itself, long a stronghold of the Guidi, which the growing Commune destroyed in the fifteenth century—the modern city with its manufactories—each represented a special phase in the history of growing civilisation.
The city of Borgo-alla-Collina on the Consuma road, to which we returned, bore a very different character. Situated on a breezy height, its wide streets were grass-grown, and its low, rambling houses looked desolate. Here Christofero Landini, the author of the Conversations of Camaldoli, spent the last years of his life. He had been the teacher of Lorenzo the Magnificent; he afterwards became Chancellor of the Republic of Florence, and a palace at Borgo was given him in acknowledgment of his services. Ampère, in his Voyages dantesques, tells an amusing incident which happened to him here. A priest offered to show him the uncorrupted body of a saint, and he showed Ampère a dried mummy in a sarcophagus. But when Ampère looked at the inscription on the sarcophagus he saw that the holy man here displayed was none other than Landini.
We did not stay to see the wonderful relic.
CASTEL SAN NICCOLO
The crispness of the air outside and the panorama of the hills had greater attractions. The road above Borgo commanded a wide field of view, and the eye was free to roam across the valley where the Arno flowed fed by many streams, and to the heights around. The valley was closed in by the Falterona, which is the highest mountain of this part of the Apennines; it rises to an elevation of 5434 ft.
After an hour’s walk we deviated to Romena, where we spent some time in the ancient church which flanks the hill. We greatly admired the old column capitals, one of which bears the date 1152. Beni’s guide-book says that the church also possesses an ancient bell, with the date 1186, and the words “Mentem Sanctam Deo Placentem.”
From Romena we left the road and descended by a path to Pratovecchio, a large rambling place, which seemed to have no special attraction. We then pushed on to Stia, which lies at the confluence of the Arno and the Staggia; above it rise the ruins of the castle of Porciano.