The Giovanni Pascoli House Museum is located in the hamlet of Castelvecchio di Barga, in what was once the “bicocca di Caprona,” the 18th-century country villa that the poet chose as a refuge for his soul. Pascoli arrived here on October 15, 1895, a date symbolically chosen to coincide with Virgil’s birthday, and spent the most serene and fruitful periods of his creative life there, until his death in 1912. Masterpieces such as the Primi Poemetti (1897), the Canti di Castelvecchio (1903) and the Poemi Conviviali (1904), works that marked the modernity of Pascoli’s poetry, saw the light of day in this residence.
After the poet’s death, his sister Maria jealously guarded the house, keeping it intact until her death in 1953, when she left the property to the municipality of Barga. The building, which has been declared a national monument, is now a House Museum that allows visitors to relive the authentic atmosphere of the period and immerse themselves in Pascoli’s sensibility.
The house has three floors and is surrounded by a charming garden, overlooking the Apuan Alps. This green space, conceived as an Italian garden with geometric flower beds, vineyard, vegetable garden and the still functioning well, also houses the grave of the faithful dog Gulì. The hill on which it stands, once known as the locality “Ai Caproni,” was renamed “Caprona” by the poet, in homage to Dantean reminiscences.
On the ground floor are the kitchen, furnished with period utensils and tableware, and the dining room, where bottles of Flos vinae, the wine produced by Pascoli, are still kept. Tens of thousands of documents that make up the poet’s archives are also kept here, along with a library of about 12,000 volumes.
The second floor revolves around Giovanni Pascoli’s study, the beating heart of the house: towering there are three desks devoted respectively to Latin poetry, Italian poetry and Dante studies, symbols of the poet’s multifaceted intellectual activity. Around it, thousands of books and personal objects testify to his passion for knowledge. Nearby rooms house the bedrooms of Giovanni and his sister Maria, while an additional room collects furniture from the Bolognese room where Pascoli died. From Maria’s living room there is access to the altana, a covered terrace that offers a striking view of Barga and its surroundings.
A few steps from the house is the chapel, a secluded and solemn place where the remains of Giovanni Pascoli and Maria rest, enshrined in a marble ark created by Leonardo Bistolfi.
The House Museum is not only a journey through time: it is an experience that allows you to perceive the poet’s intimate bond with nature, the land and the people of Castelvecchio, an inexhaustible source of inspiration for his verses. Visiting it, one fully grasps the sense of “nest” that Pascoli sought and found in this dwelling, a place of reflection, sweet nostalgia and timeless poetry.