Premilcuore

Premilcuore sits in the upper Rabbi valley on the Romagna-Tuscany border, fifty kilometers north of Florence and inside the Parco Nazionale delle Foreste Casentinesi. The Rocca and the medieval wall ring a centro storico of fewer than three hundred residents; the southern gate, Porta Fiorentina, still carries the marks of the 1375 surrender that put Premilcuore inside the Florentine state until 1923. The town belonged to the Guidi counts of Modigliana from 1124, then to Caterina Sforza in the 1490s, then to Florence for five centuries.

The Rabbi runs cold and clear through gorges below the borgo, with pools cut into the sandstone that the locals use through summer. The municipality covers ninety-eight square kilometers, mostly old-growth beech and silver-fir forest inside the national park, with six people per square kilometer. Bandiera Arancione recognition arrived in the 2000s.