Loro Ciuffenna

Born alongside the Setteponti road, with the Pratomagno range on one side and the river Arno on the other, the territory of Loro Ciuffenna is one of the most evocative of the Upper Arno Valley. The main town has Etruscan heritage and was built on a terraced ledge crossed by the stream Ciuffenna and has a roman bridge in its city centre. The road Cassia Vetus ran here, connecting Arezzo to Fiesole and then, after the 1st century BC, to its colony Firenze.

During the Middle Ages the bridge was renovated and a castle was built, mentioned for the first time in a document from 1059 with which the counts Guidi, that were its lords, gave it as a fief. The water mill that operates to this day, maybe from the following century, was built on a rock on the Ciuffenna; this mill is one of the oldest in all of Tuscany and was used for the production of chestnut flour. Loro was under the control of Guidis until 1293, in that year Florence took away the jurisdiction from the family and kept the town for the subsequent centuries.

Even today it is possible to see the mediaeval traces of Loro Ciuffenna, with its 13th century church of Our Lady of the Assumption (Santa Maria Assunta) that is the most important religious building together with the Abbey of st. Andrea, built in the 11th century, and the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Humility (Santa Maria dell’Umiltà), both the last ones are outside of the city centre. Another sight not to miss is the Museum Venturino Venturi, on the ground floor of the Town Hall, dedicated to the local artist who died in 2002, and his archive kept in his old house-atelier.

Inside the territory of Loro Ciuffenna there is “Il Borro”, one of the most particular towns in the whole province of Arezzo. It was originally a fortilice, purchased at the half of the 13th century by the Milanese nobleman Borro Borri, mayor of Arezzo from 1254 to 1256 and ancestor of the family “dal Borro”. Near Il Borro there already was the rural church of St. Giustino, documented since the 11th century, that also gave the name to the village that was built around it, the current San Giustino Valdarno. In the first half of the 17th century, thanks to the condottiero Alessandro del Borro, nicknamed “terror of Turks”, the small town developed. Later on, some prestigious families took interest in it until it passed to the Savoy family. In 1993, Duke Amedeo of Savoy-Aosta sold Il Borro to Ferruccio Ferragamo, who turned the town into an exclusive haven of fashion and wellness.

At the bottom of the western part of the Pratomagno, there is the rural church of St. Pietro in Gropina, one of the peaks of Romanesque architecture in all of Tuscany. Some Roman buildings, an early Christian church with one aisle from the 5th/6th century and a late Lombard church with two aisles from the 8th/9th century have been found under the modern building. Between the 12th and the first part of the 13th centuries, the present church was built, it has 3 aisles. At the end of the 15th century Pope Innocent III, under the approval of Lorenzo the Magnificent, gave the rural church to the poet Agnolo Poliziano. Giovanni de’ Medici, once he became the Pope in 1513, took the rural church and placed it under the ownership of the Cathedral of Florence.

Among the hamlets of Pratomagno, it is worth mentioning Trappola, Anciolina, Chiassaia, Loro Hill. The latter is the most peculiar of the mountain small towns of the municipality and it still has its fortifications. In the central square, there is the church of Our Lady of Assumption (Santa Maria Assunta), a Romanesque church from the 11th century. In the territory of Loro Ciuffenna there also is the metal Cross that is the symbol of the Pratomagno range. This cross, since 1928, is heavily featured in the photos shot by the climbers, bikers and trekking enthusiasts.