Lunigiana

The Lunigiana is the Tuscany that never made the poster: a system of green valleys between the Apennines and the sea, strung with the castles of the Malaspina family and crossed for a thousand years by the Via Francigena. Its capital of sorts is Pontremoli, a stone town of bridges and towers where the Castello del Piagnaro holds the region's great mystery — the statue stele, sandstone figures carved between the fourth and first millennium BCE, whose purpose nobody has settled. It is also, quietly, one of Italy's book towns: the Premio Bancarella, founded by Pontremoli's itinerant booksellers, is awarded here every summer.

What earns it a place on this platform is the ratio of substance to visitors. The valley has castles, walled villages, a Slow Food pasta older than most pasta, and an hourly railway — and on most days you will share all of it with the people who live there.

April to June and September to October: mild valley weather, green chestnut woods, and the village festivals in their natural rhythm. High summer is warm but never crowded — the Lunigiana is where Tuscans themselves escape the heat of the coast. Winter is quiet and many rural kitchens keep short hours; check ahead.

Train-first, genuinely: the Parma–La Spezia railway (the Pontremolese) runs the length of the valley with roughly hourly regional trains, stopping at Pontremoli, Villafranca-Bagnone and Aulla. From La Spezia the ride up to Pontremoli takes under an hour; from Parma, about an hour and a half. Aulla is also the junction for the Garfagnana railway toward Lucca — the two valleys pair naturally into one slow Tuscan loop. Local buses reach the hill villages, but they are thin; for the remoter castles a car or a taxi arrangement helps.

Sleep in Pontremoli's stone centre for the town experience, or in one of the agriturismi and restored farmhouses scattered through the valleys for the rural one — the Lunigiana's accommodation is almost entirely small-scale and owner-run, which is the point. Villafranca and Bagnone make quieter village bases on the same rail line. Book directly where you can, and verify current opening outside the April–October season.

The dish is testaroli: a spongy, crêpe-like pasta cooked in cast-iron testi, cut into diamonds, flashed in boiling water and dressed with pesto or olive oil and pecorino. It is plausibly the oldest pasta shape in Italy, and the artisanal Pontremoli testarolo is a Slow Food Presidium. Around it: torta d'erbi (wild-herb pie), chestnut flour in everything, honey from the valley hives, and the Colli di Luni wines shared with the Ligurian border. The Lunigiana holds three Slow Food presidia in total — for a valley this size, that is the whole argument.

Start at the Castello del Piagnaro above Pontremoli, where the Museum of the Lunigianese Statue Stele holds the carved sandstone figures — warriors, women, daggers, all stylised, all silent — that prehistoric inhabitants planted along the valley's roads and fords. Then work the castle circuit at your own pace: the Malaspina strongholds and walled villages that stud every ridge, with Fosdinovo's castle the grandest of the survivors.

Walk a stage of the Via Francigena, which descends the valley on its way from the Cisa Pass toward Rome — the Pontremoli-to-Aulla stretch is the classic Lunigiana day. And keep one morning for doing nothing in a piazza: Pontremoli's café life along the Magra bridges is the region at its own speed.

• Language: Italian; English is thin outside Pontremoli's museum and the agriturismi — a few phrases go far
• Currency: euro
• Plug: European type C/F/L
• Money: ATMs in Pontremoli, Aulla and Villafranca; cash useful in village bars and at farm stands
• Mobile: Coverage is good along the valley floor and rail line; patchy in the side valleys and high woods
• Good to know: The statue stele museum is open year-round with seasonal hours — check statuestele.org before a special trip
• Nearest hospital: Pontremoli hospital; the larger facilities are at La Spezia