Enchanted by Casentino

“This isn’t American Tuscany,” is what a British expat tells me when I’m surprised at how few tourists I’ve seen. Although it’s winter and the off-season for European travel, Italy hums with visitors all year so it strikes me as delightfully strange to be the only straniera (foreigner) around for miles.

Bordered by Chianti country and the region of Emilia-Romagna, the Tuscan province of Arezzo is a land of medieval castles, places of spiritual pilgrimage and forests of beech, oak and chestnut. The Casentino valley in the northern part of the province is not, as my expat friend points out, the “American Tuscany” of Florence, Siena or the cypress-studded hillsides of towns like San Gimignano. There are plenty of hills