On the flight between Milan and Ancona even regular passengers spend time looking out. The route traverses the north wall of the Apennines, abrupt as the north face of the Eiger. Behind it, under the forest fleece, countless ridges slashed with ravines push their different ways. A hopeless land to penetrate, it still contains some of the best places to visit. If Italy’s northern invaders, from Hannibal onwards, could have seen it as air travellers see it, many a campaign would have been abandoned here. 

Part Tuscany and part Emilia (the boundary runs over the watershed), the district divides into ill-defined territories: Garfagnana, Frignano, Lunigiana. They are still unknown to tourism, though very close to La Spezia (see The Tyrrhenian Coast), Pisa and Lucca. On this tour we pay our respects to cities of monumental arts but the chief attractions are the landscape – wild rocks convulsed in primeval cataclysms and the thickly-woven mats of dwarf oak, mountain ash, beech, pine and bracken which cloak them – and the villages. Places of no importance from which the young and fit have departed, they hang on with the tenacity of the tree roots and ferns they grew up with. Their cracked walls are banded with iron straps, their doors tied up with old stockings, their marsiglia pantiles all askew and reinforced with slabs of stone. There are scores of such villages, almost every one with its Malaspina or Visconti or Guidi fortress above it to command the hill passes, now half-buried in a rampant botany. Here and there city-dwellers have disfigured the scene with flashy weekend villas. 

Only 50 years ago it was all mule-tracks and gravelled lanes. Now you roll on narrow but well-shod roads – slowly enough, because gradients can be fierce, bends innumerable and the macchia so dense that it interferes with the sight-line. Do not hesitate to explore minor roads: asphalted surfaces lead to the most remote hamlets. Make time if possible to visit a couple of castles in that chain of fortresses along the northern wall, where the history of the dukedoms was written. Allow three days for it all. 

Except at garages and some trattorie you will meet few who speak anything but the local dialect. Perhaps that is why nearly all guidebooks ignore what remains to some extent an undiscovered wonderland.

TRANSPORT 

Air travel: international and domestic flights at Pisa and Florence, domestic only at Parma. 

Two highly picturesque rail routes cross the region. From north to south is the Taro Valley line, Parma and Fidenza to Sarzana and La Spezia. From south-east to northwest is the Garfagnana line, Lucca to Aulla. Many tunnels on both lines, but you have frequent glimpses of splendid untameable scenery. Some tiny stations have been closed, but the train stops at them just the same. You could see the best of both lines by taking a ticket from Parma to Lucca or vice versa, changing at Aulla. 

Main bus services through the region have their termini in Florence, Lucca, Pisa, La Spezia, Parma, Reggio Emilia and Modena. The major bus operator used to be Lazzi, now comprising several local companies. All the minor routes have regular bus services; scarcely a village is neglected. Among the more exciting journeys are Parma-Langhirano-Lagastrello Pass-Aulla; Modena-Sassuolo-Foce di Radici-Massa; and Vignola-Sestola-Abetone.