Here the Arno is a dribbling stream, narrow enough to be jumped over. Its course down the valley is marked with tottering single-arched bridges and here and there a box-like tower of a Guidi stronghold. Two of these towers, dating from the 11thC when the Guidi counts ruled the Casentino, are close to Stia. Porciano, the largest tower in the valley, is 5 km north on the Arno bank. Romena, a better-preserved tower with prison, postern, drawbridge, bailey and keep almost intact, is also beside the stripling Arno, 5 km south. Here spurts the Fonte Branda, a spring mentioned in Dante’s Inferno.

Stia is the terminus of the rail line from Arezzo; and is the near neighbour of Pratovecchio where the painter Paolo Uccello came from. Stia is also the foothill village of Monte Falterona, where the Arno rises, and is an obvious starting-point for excursions by car or on foot into the bowl of mountains which closes the northern end of the Casentino.