Loro Ciuffenna
Venturino Venturi Museum
The Museum houses a large number of sculptures and drawings, testifying to over forty years of the artist’s activity. In addition to the subjects dear to the author, the motherhood, Pinocchio, the War,we find sculptural portraits of great interest representing important figures of the lively twentieth-century Florentine world such as Ottone Rosai, Vasco Pratolini, Mario Luzi, and Antonio Bueno.
INFORMATION
Opening time:
From 1st April to 30th September every day from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm and from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm
1 October-31 March Friday and Saturday 3:00-6:00 pm
Sunday 10:00 am-1:00 pm and 3.00-6.00 pm
1st November, 8th December, 26th December, 1st January, 6th January 10.00-13.00 and 15.00-18.00
Casa Venturi, atelier of the Lorese artist, can be visited upon request, the setting in which he worked and lived in the last years of his life.
CONTACTS
Phone: 055 9170136
Historical Center of Loro Ciuffenna
For its landscape, historical and cultural features, the Municipality of Loro Ciuffenna was admitted in the Club of the most beautiful villages in Italy, which today has 250 members.
It is a mild-hill picturesque village located between the valley of the Arno and the massif of Pratomagno. In medieval times it was a fortified village, as you can guess approaching the ancient walls, built overhanging the gorges of the river Ciuffenna, or crossing the old bridge of Romanesque times, or visiting the water mill still working. But it is through the gate of the Clock that you enter the most charming part of the village: the central Via Dante is in fact bordered by paved streets that get dark and winding in the ancient district of Fondaccio in which, besides the houses, there were shops and warehouses of merchants and craftsmen.
It was the economic heart of the castle with the noble palace, today in Piazza Don Mazzoni, a small space that encloses both the Church of Santa Maria Assunta and the palace in which the Guidi Counts resided when visiting their estate. Inside the Church of S. M. Assunta there are works of high artistic value such as a Pietà and an Annunciation of the mid-sixteenth century by Carlo Portelli.
Just outside the village there are some sacred buildings that arose to receive tabernacles of miraculous images, such as the sanctuary of Our Lady of Humility, on the road to Gropina, showing seventeenth-century works. But we have to point out that the parish churches, built on the route of the ancient Via Clodia, which roughly follows the current Via dei Setteponti, characterize this territory. Of the six parishes on the Setteponti, two are in fact in the municipality of Loro: San Giustino and Gropina. All around, the landscape is characterized by traditional terraces and the presence of Balze , curious natural formations of clay and sand up to a hundred meters high: the Apennine massif of Pratomagno with its ridge of gentle slopes, is a unique habitat in which crops, forest and slopes of meadow alternate
Romanesque Parish church of San Pietro a Gropina
The Pieve di San Pietro a Gropina is one of the most interesting of our region and it has been declared a national monument. The current construction dates back to the period between the end of XII and the start of XIII century: the archaeological excavations testify that it’s located over the rests of two ancient churches, a V-VI century AD paleo – Christian church, built on pre-existent roman structures, and a second one from the Lombard age that was a remake and an expansion of the first one. It has a facade made by ashlar rocks and a semi-circular apse covered with irregular stone slabs, enriched with arcades and columns. The interior consists of three naves separated by round arches resting on monolithic columns. Relevant are the symbolic figures sculpted both on the capitals and on the semi-circular ambo taken from the bestiaries or the gospels, in addition to pagan allegories that were Christianised.
INFORMATION
Opening hours
From June 21 to September 21: 9.00 am-7.00 pm
From September 22 to September 20: 9.00 am-5.00 pm
CONTACTS
www.gropina.it