There is also the small village of Weather in Caprigliola, in Lunigiana, already well of the Fai, marked among the Vie dei Medici, itineraries that every year thanks to the work of the Tuscany Region, scholars and Italia Nostra, are enriched with stages and places, made famous by the family that made the history of Tuscany. The latest publication edited by Professor Patrizia Vezzosi and promoted by the Regional Council is entitled The ways of the Medici in Tuscany grand Medici tour from proximity to Europe and was presented in January, revealing a great ambition: to get the Vie dei Medici certified as a cultural itinerary of the Council of Europe, such as the Via Francigena, or the Camino de Santiago.
so that the village of Caprigliola, clinging like a kid on a hill close to the river Magra, in the Municipality of Aulla, became a full part of the historic Medici itineraries, a project, conceived by Vezzosi, reported as Unesco Best Practice, which has involved, over the years, historians, scholars and schools and which in the end has put together 10 itineraries, which describe villas, court intrigues, formidable defenses of the Grand Duchy, mines and ironworks. Within the Vie dei Medici, as was recently explained in a full cycle of meetings and direct facebook with the Pro Loco, the almost unknown Lunigiana also appears because, among the many wonders scattered throughout Tuscany, the Medici in 1400 chose also Caprigliola, a village that today has about 500 inhabitants, as small as it was strategic, in its time, when it dominated the trade routes, looking at the port of Luni. The touch of the Medici in Caprigliola were, and still are, the fortified walls in the shape of a comet, unique in the world and which, after their construction, made the town known just like the star-shaped village. Not much has been written about the presence of the Medici in Caprigliola, the main references are taken from the book by Roberto Guelfi I Medici and from the notebooks of the library and of the historical and notary archives of the municipality of Aulla. Summer residence of the Bishops of Luni, Caprigliola was sold to Florence in 1401 and in 1558, by order of Cosimo dei Medici, a thousand men and boys aged just 14, began the construction of the fortified walls, working for 24 years. The edges and spikes finished in brick were raised with local stone and on the right side, at the entrance to the large arch, the inscription Cosmus Med Florentie et Senari DVX-II. The walls are still well preserved and seen from above take the shape of a comet, stretching over the Magra valley: an image that scholars do not think is accidental, but that indicates centrality and importance. Militarily, in fact, a construction of defensive walls, with points and recesses, offered greater development and a multiform directionality for the guns and for the control of the valley.
A striking and uncommon construction, which makes the town, even from a distance, visually powerful, testimony of the strategic and historical importance of this village. Let’s go back to talking about the Vie dei Medici – says Patrizia Vezzosi – because the project aims at the discovery and enhancement of Tuscan places, for educational, cultural and tourist development purposes, and we know how much it is needed in this period. Caprigliola, within the Medici streets, was a discovery, an emblematic place, a one-of-a-kind. Symbol of a hidden and beautiful Tuscany that everyone should get to know.
The name of the Medici, in short, as they fly for the economy of the small Tuscan beauties that rarely end up in the itineraries of foreign tourists. For example, who knows what effect it would have on Americans to look at the village of Caprigliola from afar, at night, in September, when the lights come on and the village looks like a large luminous sailing ship, ready to sail the Magra. An evocative effect, created by the villagers to celebrate the Madonna del Buon Consiglio every second Sunday in September, which transforms Caprigliola into a large ship illuminated for the party and silhouetted in the dark, ready to sail towards infinity. And with the participation in the events in the fifth centenary of the birth of Cosimo I de ‘Medici, Caprigliola with its history and its precious vestiges, was also recognized as the only Tuscan village with walled verses: flowery alleys, hidden squares, smell of moss, very steep stairways dug between the rocks and between the houses, allow not only a journey into its history and landscape, but also an emotional and poetic journey made possible by the encounter of numerous slabs walled up on the walls of the houses, with engraved poems resulting from a guided selection within a national literary competition which takes place every year in this center.
March 31, 2021 | 11:37
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