"Few regions can compete with [the Valtiberina] for harshness and gentleness, and offer at the same time the grandest, most severe landscapes and the most tranquil and enchanting scenes of the quiet life and Virgilian serenity. Beautiful forests abound, ruins of forts scattered in the mountains, clear running water, the wild, scorched hilltops and the solitude... The eye is drawn to the ruins; and the ruins tell the tales of war; and around the ruins the spirits of the ancient legends still drift."

Pier Ludovico Occhini 

The High Tiber Valley (Tuscan Valtiberina), is the most easterly corner of Tuscany, wedged between the Romagna, the Marche and Umbria; regions that have alternately influenced its history, culture and landscape. These are border lands and, therefore, used to being influenced by differences, but these differences also strengthen their own Tuscan identity.

A land then, that straddles between the Tyrrheanian and Adriatic seas in which the fertile flood plains, soft hills and imposing mountains alternate harmoniously.

From the lush woodlands of the Alpe della Luna (Alps of the Moon), to the sweet chestnuts and beech woods of the Alpe di Catenaia, to the pastures of Badia Tedalda and Sestino to the splendid hills of Anghiari, The High Tiber Valley offers, in the brief arc of a few kilometres, an incomparable variety of landscapes and environments. In other words a kind of "terra di mezzo", rich in contrasts and diversity, history and a rural way of life that has already disappeared in many parts of Italy.

The Valtiberina does not live solely on tourism and it is for this reason that it is particularly suited to travellers of a more refined taste and discerning eye. It is somewhere authentic, straight forward, where history and art of the highest level is mixed in with local tradition and where nature, in fields surrounded by woods, show the pride of a struggle not yet lost.

A stay in the High Tiber Valley gives the possibility of wonderful excursions on foot, on horseback, or mountain bike along pathways deep in the countryside of "past times", and the opportunity of enjoying one of the numerous holiday farmhouses that can be found in the area.