VALDARNO the Arno river Valley

Il Valdarno, Pian di Scò, Castelfranco di Sopra, Loro Ciuffenna, San Giovanni Valdarno, Terranova Bracciolini, Castiglion Fibocchi, Cavriglia, Montevarchi, Laterina, Pergine Valdarno, Bucine.

The Arno river valley is a remarkable and picturesque land beginning from the point where, on the outskirts of Arezzo, the river turns its water course northwards.  Rising, in prehistoric age, out of the natural flowing of the waters of a lake that flooded the basin still at the end of tertiary era, this land is a succession of slight slopes alternated with numberless sheer rocks eroded by rain waters. There everything  is color: the brown undergrowth of the pine trees on the top of gullies, the dark oak trees squatted at the bottom of the gorges of the yellowish chary walls  opened like not healed wounds, the eternal silver of the olive groves and the green of vineyards that redden every year at the end of the good season. In all the valley at the bell towers of the villages and the towers of ancient suburbs, churches and castles, some of them have Etruscan marmes as Loro Ciuffenna, Gropino. For its opulence the Arno river valley was the obyect and theatre of bloody disputes between the two towns, that at the end of the Middle Age, airmed at the predominance in Tuscany: the Guelph Florence and the Ghibelline Arezzo. At the end of the thirteenh century to oppose the military attacks that they were compelled to suffer from the warlike Aretian bishops