Natural History Museum - Orecchiella Park

The State Forestry’s visitor centre,  structured on 3 floors, is an essential point of reference for the Park. In the centre a technical department, a guest quarters, a library, a research laboratory, the Conference Hall-Projections and the Natural History Museum are active. The latter was designed in order to develop interactive teaching units with the public aimed from groups of students to all visitors. Inside environmental issues are faced, rebuilt all aspects of the natural environment Orecchiella: beech forest, high-altitude meadows, pastures and rocky walls.
Opening : every Sunday from Easter to 1st November .
The weekends: from June to September
Every day from 1st July to 15th September 
By reservation for groups all year.

Ethnographic museum Don Luigi Pellegrini - San Pellegrino in Alpe

Set in the medieval Hospital of San Pellegrino (XI -XII sec.), place of care and shelter for travelers and pilgrims, is one of the most important collections of central Italy’s objects of material culture. The exposed stuff is expression of the artisans, farmers and shepherds’ Serchio Valley and Tuscan-Emilian Apennines tradition, and it covers a span of time from the beginning of the 19th century to nowadays. The exhibition itinerary is divided into 14 rooms arranged according to various themes:
from environments’ reconstruction related to the rural house (kitchen, cellars, bedrooms), to production cycles’ commencement (bread-making, spinning and weaving, the cheese’s making). A large number of tools documents the agricultural work, with reference to the peasant’s different moments ( ploughing , reaping, workmanship, and products’ storage) and the artisan proposing the workshop, the blacksmith’s workshop, the carpenter, the candles’ factory.

Timetable:
• From 1st April to 31st May   9.00-12.00 /  14.00-17.00
• From 1st June to 30th September 9.30-13.00 / 14.30-19.00
• From 1st October to 31st March 9.00-13.00 (weekdays) 9.00-12.00 / 14.00-17.00 (holidays)

Closed on Mondays (except July and August).

Castiglione di Garfagnana's Fortress 

Historians say that Castello del Leone was the ancient name of this fortified village, still intact and austere, located in a strategic position to control the road that leads to San Pellegrino’s pass, a way of connecting with the north of Italy, beyond the Apennines. The fate of Castiglione, unlike most countries of Garfagnana, it has always been linked to Lucca since 1371, but it never being subdued, despite suffering few attacks, to the Este family.  The walls we can see with its majestic towers of the 15th century surrounding, even today for 750 meters, the town centre. In further defence of the fortress, which rises elegant above the roofs of houses and is equipped with  three additional towers and it is presently a private residence. No less important, within the walls, there are two important churches: San Pietro, which dates to the Lombard era, built in 723 by the brothers and Aurinand and Gudifrid and the 15th century San Michele, which conserves a beautiful panel painting of the Madonna with Julian of Simon’s Child in 1389 and a wooden crucifix from, according to the tradition, St. Christopher's Castle Verrucchia’s ancient church.Castiglione is rich in culture, history and traditions. The Procession of Crocioni is the best known example.

Mont’Alfonso’s Fortress - Castelnuovo Garfagnana

The Mont'Alfonso Fortress, built in the second half of the sixteenth century by Alfonso II d'Este, is one of the most impressive architectural monuments of the Serchio Valley, covering an area of about 60,000 square meters. It is located about 1-2 minutes by car from the centre of Castelnuovo Garfagnana and offers beautiful views of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines slopes and the Pania mountain system, in the Apuan Alps.

Owned by the Province of Lucca since 1980, it has been fully restored and is one of the most monumental Tuscan buildings with a complete energy self-sufficiency.

Today the fortress is:

• Tourist Information Point
• Congress Centre
• Documentation Centre on Fortifications in Garfagnana
• Folk Traditions Centre
• Teaching laboratory and library
• Educational camp
• Provincial Administration Headquarters
• Apuan Alps Park Headquarters

Museum of High Garfagnana’s Identity  - Gorfigliano

The itinerary starts from one room where ancient equipment for work are exposed, Gorfigliano’s historical reconstruction before and after 1900 when it began Marble’s escavation, on the background a giant of the Old Church before starting works in 1983 (with the trees grown on the roof), then you come into a video room where the story is told by the volunteers "heroes" at work. Then we arrived to the museum’s central hall where hundreds of objects linked to the ancient crafts of marble quarryman, shoemaker, pastor, blacksmith’s woodcutter, and many more are exposed. Upstairs there is a whole section devoted to the world of carpentry, a library with a reading room, and a meeting room with video for conferences and seminars.
Opening :
From 1st June to 30th September : Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 12.00 and 14.00 to 19.00 during the week always open booking.
From 1st  October to 31st  May: always open booking
times subject to change

Calomini Hermitage

The sanctuary, set on the edge of a rocky cliff and almost entirely excavated in the rock, was built where it is narrated of Madonna’s apparition by a Campolemisi’s girl around the year 1000. The sacred image, sketched in a wooden statue of willow, which still exists and is object of devotion, is revered by the name of Madonna della Penna.  During the summer the hermitage is open every day, meanwhile in other months only on Sundays, during the Mass’s opening. 

Casa Museo Pascoli - Castelvecchio Pascoli

The country villa of the Cardosi-Carrara is the accommodation that Giovanni Pascoli chose as a residence in 1985. The Poet came to the Serchio Valley to have found a "bicocca with a bit of garden and wilderness" in a suggestive valley , full of voices, colors and lights, with the sister Maria and the dog Gulì. The house maintains the structure, the furnishings, the layout of the spaces, which it had at the time of Giovanni Pascoli's death, in Bologna on April 6, 1912. The sister has preserved, with deep affection, the house for forty years and she is buried near his brother in the chapel of the villa.