The territory of the Valdarno is singular and picturesque and begins
from the point at which, near Arezzo, the river
changes direction and heads north. Immersed in
pre-historic times by the natural flow of the waters of a lake
which flooded the basin up until the Tertiary Age, it is a series of
gentle slopes interrupted
by numerous ridges eroded by rain water.
Here everything is color, the
brown- bronze bush of the pines at the top of the
gullies, the gloomy oaks at the foot of the gorges with
walls of yellowy clay open like open wounds, the eternal silver of the
olive groves and the green of the vines which become deep purple every
year at the end of the season.
Throughout
the valley, at an hour’s walking distance from each other, the
bell towers and the towers of the old villages, the pievi and the
castles rise up, some of which still have Etruscan sounding names such
as Loro Ciuffenna, Gropina and Cennina.
Because of its opulence, the ldarno Valley was the object of
brutal battles fought between the two cities which, at the end of
the medieval period, aspired to dominate Tuscany: The Guelphs of
Florence and the Ghibellines of Arezzo.
At the end of the XIII cent., in order to combat the military pressure
of the war-mongering Aretine bishops
who possessed large properties and well-supplied castles such as
Cennina, Casiglione degli Ubertini e Laterina, the Florentines built the
three “terre murate”, three fortified towns: San Giovanni, Terranuove
and Castelfranco.
After the death of Bishop Guido Tarlati in 1327,
the Aretine Republic underwent a slow but inexorable decline
until, in 1384, it ceased to exist and its territories were made a part
of the Florentine Republic.
With this end to the conflict, the limits of jurisdiction of the Arezzo
department were set in Valdarno according to a line which also included the three walled cities
built by the Florentines a century earlier.
Three roads from Arezzo lead to the Valdarno following the entire length
of the valley as far as Florence: the Autostrada del Sole, the SS 69
which follows the line of the river and the road of the Setteponti,
already in existence in the Etruscan period which emerges out on the
hills of the Pratomagno dominating the valley of
the imaginary water-line of the lost lake.
Even though the Valdarno maintains an agricultural tradition of wine and
olive production of high quality, it is considered to be one of the
oldest and most important areas of
industrialization of the Arezzo area. The process of industrial
development, concentrated in well de- limited zones, has left intact the
charm of the landscape and the artistic heritage of the Valdarno area.
