L’Alta Vallesanta

Located between La Verna and Camaldoli, surrounded by mountains, Vallesanta is an inaccessible valley. Its landscapes have remained uncontaminated and today they appear as a fascinating wild territory dominated by wooded mountains and valleys crossed by a myriad of streams. The green fields, meadows and pastures still extend around the forests, completing the picture of bucolic suggestions. Few and sporadic are the anthropic tracks of villages, farmhouses and infrastructures. The paths lined with dry stone walls, the ancient chestnut woods, the abandoned districts, the fields left uncultivated, tell visitors, that know how to look at them, a story about hard work and poverty, cottages teeming with people, animals brought to pasture, artisans, worked fields: a rural heritage, that through the past, teaches us a peasant world that is disappearing.
The “santa” name attributed to the Valley seems to have distant heritage, probably linked to the presence of ancient hermitage places. One of the traditional characters, in this regard, is San Barnaba who in 56 d.c found his hermitage in Vallesanta during his pilgrimage from Rome to Milan.