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Updated: June 11, 2025
In the night before the great inundation of the Val d'Arno in 1333, a pious hermit above Vallombrosa heard a diabolical tumult in his cell, crossed himself, stepped to the door, and saw a crowd of black and terrible knights gallop by in amour.
The summer fell upon Val d'Arno like the upsetting of a Tuscan Scaldino, and Ralph Flare regretfully took his departure northward. All the world was going to Paris why not he? Was he afraid? Certainly not; it had been a great victory over temptation to stay away so long. He would carry out the triumph by braving a return.
This fortress is situated at the foot of the mountains which divide the Casentino from the Val d'Arno; and being in an elevated situation, and well garrisoned, it was difficult to take, though Niccolo, with catapults and other engines, assailed it without intermission.
On the right, as you stand upon the brow, appears Fesule with its turrets and white houses, covering a rocky mount; to the left, the vast Val d'Arno lost in immensity. A Franciscan convent stands on the summit of the eminence, wrapped up in ancient cypresses, which hinder its holy inhabitants from seeing too much of so gay a view.
Florence calls out her trades instantly, and with gules, a dragon vert, and or, a bull sable, they march, themselves, angrily up the Val d'Arno, replace the adverse Ghibellines in Arezzo, and send Master Guido de' Conti Guido about his business. But the prettiest and most curious part of the whole story is their equity even to him, after he had given them all this trouble.
The long Italian day is past, and its shadows have died over the neighboring mountains, giving place to the voluptuous and dewy twilight, which lightly wraps itself with its soft mantle of studded stars closely about the lovely breast of the Val d'Arno.
And just as the Duomo, the great church of the northern part of the city, is set just within the walls far away from the Borgo, so here, in the southern part of Pisa, S. Paolo a Ripa d'Arno is abandoned by the riverside on the verge of the country, for the fields are at its threshold.
But if it be true that this fagade was built in 1188, and that the fagade of the Duomo of Pisa was built in 1250, and even that of S. Paolo a Ripa d'Arno there, in 1194, Guidetto's work here in Lucca is the older, and the Pisan master has made but a difficult simplification, perhaps, of this very work.
Far and far away lies Florence, with her beautiful domes and towers, and around you are the valleys, Val d'Arno, Val di Sieve, while behind you lies the strangest and loveliest of all, Val di Casentino, hidden in the hills at the foot of the great mountain, scattered with castles, holy with convents; and there Dante has passed by and St. Francis, and Arno is continually born in the hills.
Newer Pliocene Strata of the Upper Val d'Arno. Older Pliocene of Italy. Subapennine Strata. Older Pliocene Flora of Italy.
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