Placed at the foot of the Pratomagno on its southern side, the municipality of Talla can be reached both from the Umbro-Casentinese and from the Setteponti, the latter through the Crocina pass. It is a mountainous and hilly area, the majority of it covered in forests and for this is one of the green places of the province of Arezzo.
A fundamental junction that connects Valdarno and Casentino, Talla was populated during the Etruscan and Roman times. According to tradition, Guido d’Arezzo was born here in 966; he was a Benedictine monk who later became the most important musical theorist of the Middle Ages . In Castellaccia, a locality of Talla, there is his birthplace that has been turned into the Museum of Music.
During the Middle Ages, the Ubertini family had a small fortress in Talla from which they ruled the area until 1384, the year of the definitive submission of Arezzo and its territory to Florence.
The town has lots of picturesque glimpses. In Nencetti square there is the church of st. Niccolò, built in 1644 by the Ducci family and the company of the Sacrament.
The hamlets of the area are very ancient. Capraia, a charming mountain hamlet, had a castle that was destroyed in 1502 by the troops of the soldier of fortune Vitellozzo Vitelli. The church of st. Mary has a “Madonna with child” in glazed terracotta from the 15th century.
In Pontenano, some underground tombs from the 4th century BC have been found. The place, during the early Middle Ages, became popular for the battles between Langobards and Byzantines because of its strategic location. In the 11th century, a castle was built there by the bishops of Arezzo that during the second half of the 14h century passed under the rule of Florence and was demolished in 1426. The church of st. Margherita and Biagio has been documented since the 14th century and so has been the rural church of st. Paolo, in the hamlet of Pieve a Pontenano.
From Pontenano it is possible to reach the remains of the abbey of the Holy Trinity on the Alp, at an altitude of 950 m. This was the first Benedictine monastery in Casentino, founded some time between 950 and 961, by the German hermites Pietro and Eriprando.
Between the 11th and 12th centuries, the abbey reached its height, then it started its slow fall into decline. The entrust of the abbey to the Vallombrosa monks did not stop the fall and so, at the end of the 17th century the monastery had already become ruins and now there are only charming remains of it, deep in the forest. Nowadays, it is still possible to look at the big semi-circular apsis and the transenna made from sandstone that cut the aisle in half.
