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Lunigiana is an historical territory of Italy, which today falls within the provinces of La Spezia and Massa Carrara. Italy (Italia officially the Italian Republic, (Repubblica Italiana is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest La Spezia ( Spèsa in the local dialect of Ligurian) is a city in the Liguria region of northern Italy, at the head of La Spezia Massa-Carrara ( Provincia di Massa-Carrara) is a province in the Tuscany region of Italy. Its borders derive from the ancient Roman settlement, later the medieval diocese of Luni, which no longer exists.

Lunigiana covers an area from the Apennines to the Magra river, belonging in part to Tuscany and in part to Liguria. The Magra is a 62 km river of Northern Italy which runs through Pontremoli, Villafranca in Lunigiana and Aulla in the Province of Massa-Carrara Tuscany (Toscana is a region in Italy. It has an area of 22990 km² and a population of about 3 Liguria is a coastal region of north-western Italy, the third smallest of the Italian regions It takes its name from Luni, a Roman town, perhaps pre-dated by an Etruscan settlement, which became the principal urban center on the northern Tuscan coast. Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy Some contend that the name Luni refers to the moon, a celestial body whose beauty is made all the more attractive when framed by the white-peaked Apuan Alps and high Apennine mountains. Others maintain, though little or no evidence exists, that the region was populated by those who worshiped the moon. As if to unite history and myth, the symbol of contemporary Lunigiana is a crescent moon held in the claw of a bear. The earliest inhabitants of this region may have been the Apuani (from which is derived the name of the Apuan mountain chain), an ancient Ligurian people, as well as Etruscans who may have inhabited towns along the coast and even the hamlets near in-land trade routes. The Apuani were one of the most formidable and powerful of the Ligurian tribes who lived in ancient north-western Italy, mentioned repeatedly by Livy. Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to the culture and way of life of a people of ancient Italy Curiously, while evidence of both Roman and later Medieval settlements are ample, the wondrously appealing stele, late pre-historic and Bronze Age stone statues which have been found in large numbers in this part of Tuscany, remain the symbol of this ancient land. A stele (from Greek:, stēlē, ˈstiːli plural stelae,, stēlai, ˈstiːlaɪ also found Latinised singular stela The term Bronze Age refers to a period in human cultural development when the most advanced Metalworking (at least in systematic and widespread use included techniques for They are the first expression of the art and, perhaps, of the religious beliefs of the peoples that inhabited northern Tuscany from the Bronze Age to start of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial

The history of Lunigiana is one of passion; of intense creativity but also ferocious battles. The nearby Gulf of Poets saw the Romantic poets Shelley and Byron set the artistic world on fire and follow in the Renaissance footsteps of Dante and Michelangelo. Romanticism is a complex artistic literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth" Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime One of them by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all

Castles in Lunigiana

During the Middle Ages, there were 160 castles in Lunigiana, only thirty of which have reached our times in a good state of preservation while others such as the castle of Agnino di Fivizzano have fallen into ruin. Fivizzano is a city located in the Province of Massa-Carrara, Tuscany ( Italy) It was in these castles that Dante found respite during his stay in Lunigiana. The historical origins of these castles date back to times when the Longobards dominated most of the Pianura Padana and, seeking an outlet on the Ligurian/Tuscan coast, they found in the Passo della Cisa and the Passo del Cerreto, near the important town of Fivizzano, the easiest ways to cross the Apennines. The Lombards ( Latin Langobardi, whence the alternative names Langobards and Longobards) were a Germanic people originally from The Po ( Latin: Padus, Po Ligurian: Bo, Greek: Eridanus) is a river that flows 652 km(405 miles (682 km by considering

During ancient times, when the settlement of Luni, originally founded by the Romans in 177 B. Ancient Rome was a Civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC C. , (today a site of significant Roman ruins and a modern museum) was a flourishing city and harbour, the Romans had already built solid defensive posts along the Via Aurelia, a major road which linked up central Italy to Lunigiana and from Lunigiana to both the coastal road through Liguria and to Gaul (modern France) and across the Apennines into modern Reggio Emilia. The Via Aurelia was a Roman road constructed around the year 241 BC. Liguria is a coastal region of north-western Italy, the third smallest of the Italian regions Gaul (Gallia was the Roman name for the region of Western Europe comprising present day northern Italy, France, Belgium, western For the city in the southern Italy See Reggio Calabria. For the basketball club "Bipop Carire Reggio Emilia" see Pallacanestro Reggiana. Upon significant sections of this Roman road, the Longobards would later build the Via Francigena, for the control of which there were bloody and ferocious struggles among the local nobility, concerned with the maintenance their dominion and Fiefdoms, as well as between the states of Pisa and Lucca and, later still, between Florence, Milan and Genoa. The Via Francigena is an ancient road between Rome and Canterbury, passing through England, France, Switzerland and Italy Under the system of Feudalism, a fiefdom, fief, feud, feoff, or fee, often consisted of inheritable lands or revenue-producing Pisa is a city in Tuscany, central Italy, on the right bank of the mouth of the Arno River on the Ligurian Sea. Lucca is a city in Tuscany, northern central Italy, situated on the river Serchio in a fertile plain near (but not on the Ligurian Sea Florence ( Italian: Firenze Florentia and Fiorenza) is the Capital City of the Italian region of Tuscany Milan (Milano Milan (listen) is one of the largest cities in Italy, located in the plains of Lombardy. Genoa ( Genova, ˈdʒɛːnova in Italian; Zena in Genoese and Ligurian; Genua in Latin and archaically in English

The most important castles in Lunigiana, including La Verrucola, the famous castle of Fivizzano now inhabited by artist Pietro Cascella, and the castle of the Piagnaro in Pontremoli, the Rocca of Villafranca, the Malaspina castle in the city of Massa and the fortified village of Filetto, had been built as a result of these monumental struggles for control of Lunigiana. Pietro Cascella ( February 2, 1921; Pescara, Italy &ndash May 18, 2008; Pietrasanta, Italy was an Italian painter Pontremoli is a city commune and bishop's see in the Province of Massa-Carrara, Tuscany, Italy. Villafranca in Lunigiana is a Comune (municipality in the Province of Massa-Carrara in the Italian region Tuscany, located about Massa is a town and comune in Tuscany, Italy, the administrative centre of the Province of Massa-Carrara. Filetto is a commune and Town in the Province of Chieti in the Abruzzo region of Italy Moreover, when the Malaspina (one of the leading Lunigianese dynasties during the Middle Ages) played an import part in both the local politics of Lunigiana and the politics of northern Italy, they built a great number of castles, which were used as residences and fortifications by which several branches of the dynasty defended the territory.

Some scholars contend that with the growth of flourishing branches of the Malaspina dynasty, the inheritance of Lunigianese feudal territories by the ever contesting large and small branches of the family eventually brought about a diminution of individual holdings causing, in the end, the parceling of fiefdoms into increasingly smaller estates, all of which needed to be protected through the building of castles and other stone fortifications. Thus, through the centuries, many large and small (now picturesque) castles were built in Lunigiana, but at the cost of weakening the overall power of the family at each generation.

As a region which controls the passage from Tuscany to the northern territories of Lombardy and Parma, as well as from Tuscany to the eastern lands of Liguria and across the Apennines into Reggio Emilia, Lunigiana was fought over for centuries in countless wars which pitted the native feudal dynasties against one another. Tuscany (Toscana is a region in Italy. It has an area of 22990 km² and a population of about 3 Lombardy (Lombardia Latin: Langobardia, Western Lombard: Lumbardìa, Eastern Lombard: Lombardia) is one of the Parma is a City in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna near Modena famous for its Architecture and the fine countryside around it Then, in order to gain control of this strategic region, Luccans fought Pisans, Pisa struggled with Genoese, Milanese struck out against the Modense and Florentines made war on them all. While the Genoese were able to gain control of La Spezia, Sarzana and the littoral coast all the way from the Cinque Terre to ancient Luni itself, the Milanese took more northern parts of Lunigiana. La Spezia ( Spèsa in the local dialect of Ligurian) is a city in the Liguria region of northern Italy, at the head of La Spezia Sarzana is a Town and comune in the Province of La Spezia, of Liguria, Italy, 15 km east of Spezia, on the Railway to The Cinque Terre (pronounced CHEEN-kweh TEHR-reh is a rugged portion of coast of the Riviera to the west of the city of La Spezia, in the province of La Spezia Meanwhile, some northeastern Lunigianese towns came under the control of either Parma or Modena. Modena (ˈmɔːdena Mòdna in Modenese dialect is a city and a Comune ( Municipality) on the south side of the Po valley, in the Nevertheless, the most strategic parts of ancient Lunigiana began to come under the control of the Florentine state in the early 15th century. By the second half of that century, Tuscan possession of most of Lunigiana was secured with the incorporation of Fivizzano and its vast territory into the Tuscan state. With Italian unification in the mid-nineteenth century, most of Lunigiana, though divided for centuries among the contesting duchies and city-states of northern Italy, came into the new Kingdom of Italy as part of Tuscany proper. Italian Unification ( Italian: il Risorgimento, or "The Resurgence" was the political and social movement that unified different states of the Italian The Kingdom of Italy ( Italian: Regno d'Italia) was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom

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