Area to the north of Arezzo. Locked on the north by mountains where Arno and Tiber rise, on the west by the Pratomagno and on the east by the thronging masses of Apennine, the Casentino is insulated from main lines of communication. It is the valley of green slopes and cooling streams which tantalized tormented souls in Dante’s Inferno. The red-and-brown railcar trundles up the infant Arno almost to its source, a stopping trip of 48 km through chapters of Tuscan history. At Campaldino in 1289 Dante took part in the last battle of the civil wars, Guelph against Ghibelline. At Pratovecchio the ‘first scientific painter’ Paolo Uccello was born.
     Slim angular towers and decayed abbeys dot the route. Romena has a place in the Divine Comedy. The Camaldoli monastery and hermitage (where monks live in isolated cells, www.camaldoli.it), enclosed in woodland and flowering vine, is a popular excursion from Bibbiena.