Poppi is located in the center of the Casentino, inside the National Park of the Casentino Forests, Monte Falterona and Campigna. The village is dominated by the mighty Castle of the Counts Guidi, inside the Rilliana Library, rich in hundreds of medieval manuscripts and incunabula. The history of this town dates back to the 12th century when it became the main residence of the Counts Guidi, in 1440 it passed under the dominion of Florence.
Today the village shines with an architectural harmony that makes its visit particularly suggestive, becoming part of The Most Beautiful Villages of Italy. Walking through the town it is possible to visit the Abbey of San Fedele, dating back to the 13th century, which preserves valuable works of art, including a Madonna with Child from the end of the 13th century.
Even the Oratory of the Madonna del Morbo is definitely worth a visit.
In Poppi, the ancient art of furniture is widespread and renowned, thanks to which objects ranging from the Renaissance to the modern style are made, passing through the rustic style.
The microcosm of venerable hermits, innkeepers, friars, jugglers, penitents, abbesses, converted and Madonnas that, in Fiabe fantastiche by Emma Perodi (1892), recite their part on the same depth of the Casentino, enlightens us on the essence of this valley that draws a different Tuscany: not the one of Giglio, Fiorentina, elegant geometric, harmonica, Renaissance, but that where the Arno opens the road in the middle of the mountains of the Apennines, toward the borders of Romagna. Here, everything is more forested, more mystic. Here, the ravines in the caves and of course in the details, the devil hides. Precisely in the Casentino area where in the first centuries of Christianity, there were monks who spent their lives to collect and write legends of saints, the devil appears. And even if this is no longer the case, we still feel mysterious presences in the woods surrounding the parish churches and castles of Casentino. Between these castles, that of Poppi maintains its romantic "aura": its mole imposes itself on the valley, is visible from all towns around and is the expression of the warrior spirit of its founders, the Guidi Counts, uncontested lords of Casentino until 1440, when the betrayal of one of them opened the road to the florentine possession. The castle bears the signature of the famous family of architects Di Cambio and is the "prototype" of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. The existing walls and four ports (originally five) Â of the village were already constructed since about thirty years when, on 11 June 1289, they fought at Campaldino, in the plain below Poppi, one of the most important battles of the Middle Ages, to which participated also Dante Alighieri: Florence against Arezzo, i.e. Guelphs against the Ghibellines. Two things must be seen in the castle: the Rilliana Library full of 25 thousand antique volumes, manuscripts and incunabula; and the fourteenth-century cycle of frescoes attributed to Taddeo Gaddi, a pupil of Giotto.
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