Arezzo and environs
Valdarno
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Valdarno
Hotels Valdarno
Restaurants Typical Products Services
Restaurants Typical Products Services
This unique and picturesque valley (Valdarno) begins at the point where, in the vicinity of Arezzo, the River Arno changes course and heads north. It was formed in prehistoric times by the natural discharge of waters from a lake which continued to inundate its basin down to the end of the tertiary period. The valley itself is made up of a series of gentle slopes broken by innumerable peaked ridges eroded over time by rainwater.There is a variety of colours to be seen here: the dark thicket of pines at the top of the gulleys, the shadowy oaks hidden at the bottom of the ravines with their yellowish clay walls cut open and bare like unhealable wounds, the immortal silver of the olive groves and the green vines which mature and finally turn red and gold each year as the summer months slowly draw to a close.
When the land is worked, the soil frequently yields fossile remains of fauna which used to water at the edge of the Pliocene lake; large bones of animals such as the giant mammoth - once at home here.
Dotted all along the valley standing out against the horizon, about an hour's walking-distance from each other, are the village campanili, old city towers, parish churches and castles, some bearing an Etruscan-sounding name like Loro Ciuffenna, Gropina and Cennina.
At Valdarno, there is tourist accommodation available in hotels, farm holiday, farmhouse, residence self-catering accommodation, b&b, rooms for rent, holiday homes, camp sites and tourist villages.
