Attractions and Places To See around Chitignano - Top 20

Here you will find a particularly impressive section of the false wall of La Penna.

a book to walk

The frescoes retrace the life of St. Francis, very interesting!

The name of this place is linked to the local tradition of using caves for food preservation. The rocks and the shade of the forest help to isolate the cavities from the outside, maintaining a constant low temperature. It was also common to fill the caves with snow during the winter to increase their cooling power during the warmer months. Even today it is possible to appreciate the difference in temperature between the outside and the inside, especially during the summer.

The place where the sanctuary is located today was donated to Saint Francis by Count Orlando Cattani of Chiusi in 1213. First a hermitage was founded which became a recurring destination for Francis and his disciples for periods of meditation and prayer. Francis stayed here for the last time in 1224. It was precisely on the occasion of that last visit that the Saint received the stigmata. The complex includes the small church of Santa Maria degli Angeli built by Francis himself, the corridor and the Chapel of the Sacred Stigmata and the Basilica dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta where you can admire the Annunciation by the sculptor Andrea della Robbia. The sanctuary is surrounded by the monumental forest of La Verna, a forest of fir and beech trees cared for over the centuries by the Franciscan friars.

The Corridor of the Stigmata della Verna was built between the years 1578 and 1582. An architectural structure that served to connect the new large basilica of the Sanctuary with the much older Chapel of the Stigmata built around 1260 by the Counts Guidi of Poppi in homage to San Francis. The corridor had a very specific practical function: to protect from the atmospheric agents, which were often particularly harsh in La Verna, the procession of the friars which at the time was held twice a day, at night and in the afternoon (today it is held only in the afternoon, at 3pm 3.30pm towards the chapel, 3.30pm towards the basilica). A legend tells us that the decision to build the corridor was taken after a strong night storm had made the friars desist from practicing this religious function that night. In the morning, to their great amazement, the friars found a multitude of footprints in the snow along the route of the procession. The animals of the forest had replaced the friars in the practice of the procession. This miraculous fact led to the decision to build a structure that would allow the procession to take place in any weather situation. The corridor, which was called "of the Stigmata", was located under a roof supported on one side by a wall and on the other by columns, the latter open to the outside. Today this part is also closed by a glass window, a work carried out only in 1926. Since its construction, the wall that flanked the Corridor of the Stigmata was decorated by anonymous painters who illustrated the life of Saint Francis, paintings certainly of a popular nature, of no particular artistic value. Only ninety years after its construction (1670/71) the decorations of the corridor were entrusted to the hands of a worthy artist: Emanuele da Como, a minor Franciscan friar. He painted 21 large squares on the wall (about three meters wide), in each of these he depicted various historical and legendary episodes from the life of the Saint, for a total of 73 scenes. As already mentioned, the side of the corridor opposite the decorated wall was open and over the years the atmospheric agents did not spare the paintings which over the years underwent some restoration work, but all quite approximate. In 1840, the painter Luigi Ademolli, aided by his son Giovanni, was entrusted with the task of more substantially restoring the frescoes. It was a rather heavy intervention which significantly transformed Emanuele da Como's paintings. Even these paintings deteriorated rapidly over the course of a few decades because they were always exposed to humidity, ice and temperature changes. In the 1930s, after the wall opposite the decorations had been closed by glass, it was decided to repaint it, not a restoration, but new paints. The task was entrusted to the painter Baccio Maria Bacci who used the usual large panels, which however he did not divide into various scenes, but rather one episode for each panel. Baccio Maria Bacci did not repaint the last three panels which, being in a more sheltered position, had been spared from atmospheric agents. The last one, the "Death of Saint Francis", can still be attributed to Emanuele da Como, as it has only undergone slight restorations over time, the penultimate and the third to last can undoubtedly be attributed to Luigi Ademolli because of the pictorial style of the The artist from Como has practically nothing left. Baccio Maria Bacci also created the 22nd painting using the part of the wall above the access door to the corridor of the Stigmata della Verna. Here he painted a Nativity scene, an invention of Saint Francis. It is from this decoration that the series of images that tell us about the life of the Saint of Assisi begins. taken from https://www.ilbelcasentino.it/san-francesco-seq.php

Located at 1,254 meters above sea level, the top of Mount Calvano is characterized by an immense meadow between Casentino and Valtiberina. It is not far from the Verna sanctuary and it is not uncommon for you to come across grazing animals.

Monte Calvano (1254 m above sea level) is a mountain in the Apennines in Italy. There is a path that leads to the summit. Monte Calvano is one of the 307 peaks along the multi-day European long-distance hiking trail E1.