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 Up
until the 80's of the 17th century, when the new road between Pistoia and
Modena was built, one of the main Appenine crossings between the two cities
was the Croce dell'Alpe pass, now also called Croce Arcana, which used to
link the pistoiese area with the ancient and important monastery/hostel
of Fanano. In a military mapping document, recently published by Andrea
Ottanelli and dated 1747, the road's route in the pistoiese mountains, is
clearly defined: it's final stretch, from the point where the Limestre flows
into the Lima, of eight miles (nearly thirteen kilometers) started from
the Osteria Nuova, "that remains two miles up the Road" (the actual
Mammiano Basso), where was "the route that leads to Lizzano a place
big and able to contain a great troop. From Lizzano you go to Vizzaneta,
small place; before arriving you pass the bridge of Forca distant a quarter
of a mile from Lizzano, a road not very mountainous but full of stones.
From here you go to Andia, small place and you mount the Alps to go to the
Modenese and Bolognese" (A. Ottanelli, The state of the roads of the
Pistoiese mountains in a military mapping document of the 18th century -
Second part, << Pistoiese Historical Bulletin>>, XCV, 1993).A route that, especially during good seasons must have still been used, maybe to avoid the inspections fixed along the new road, particularly those of the border control station of Boscolungo. This explains also the decision to create in 1788, besides the two custom's points of Lizzano and Cutigliano, a "new border control observation point situated at the two routes, that remains on the Alps at the top of the two castles of Lizzano and Cutigliano", named "The Soldier's Cabin". Only less than fifteen years later, in 1834, the age of the Leopoldin cadastre land register, the custom's point was marked as "diruta", therefore deserted, probably also because the adverse climatic conditions for most part of the year would prevent it from being used. Which created the term "doganaccia" (literally: the bad border). |
 CUTIGLIANO
AND THE CAPTAINCY OF THE MOUNTAIN AREA OF PISTOIA |
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 Even
though the name would be related to the patronymic Roman of Acutilius, the
birth of Cutigliano is situated around the end of the 13th century. But
its importance grew only when the Pistoiese Mountain region entered definitively
the Florentine orbit, in the second half of the 14th century. Previously,
when the region was still under the exclusive control of Pistoia, the most
important center was Lizzano, that appears as "curtis" and as
a parish from 998, in the well-known diploma by Ottone III to the bishop
of Pistoia. It was still in 1361 the residency of the 'Captain of the Upper
Mountain', who was a pistoiese officer that had to check upon the region
and guarantee the security of the "strata qua itur Lombardia"
(E. Biagini, Cutigliano from its origin to the municipal age, Pistoia 1994)In 1373, when Cutigliano was by then under Florentine control, there was the transfer of the Captain's residency to "Villa Cutigliani", where the municipal palace was built. The present layout of the palace is however more recent and dates back to the 16th century (F. Gurrieri, The Captains of the Mountain's palace in Cutigliano, Florence 1990). From then the importance of the built-up area in Cutigliano gradually grew, ousting that of Lizzano, until it became in the first half of the 16th century the only "summer" residency of the Capitain. In the winter, in fact, the Capitain of the Mountain's residency was in the lower part of San Marcello, which, during the 18th century and mainly after the leopoldin reforms in the area of Pistoia, became the main administrative center of the mountains.
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| THE
RIDGE: A NATURAL BORDER LINE |
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 The
ridge, which from the Abetone pass leads to Lake Scaffaiolo and then to
'Corno alle Scale' (that corresponds to CAI footpath no. 00) can well be
considered a true natural border, very often insuperable for the roughness
of Libro Aperto and of Monte Spigolino and where the possible crossing points
are really few. As Giovanni Bortolotti reminds us, talking about one "only
pass [that one of] Croce Arcana (m. 1675), well known in the antiquity because
it is crossed by the road Ospitale - Cutigliano. Still now - at around the
1950's - the road Ospitale - Croce Arcana - Cutigliano is used in any season.
On the ridge, posts embeded in the ground mark the way to help travelers
when snow or the fog make it uncertain" (G. Bortolotti, Guide to the
Scaffaiolo lake and to the high ridge from Oppio to Abetone, Bologna 1950)The magnificence and also the difficult accessibility of this natural border has not however discouraged the cartographers and the workers engaged in the making of the borders of the Grand Dukedom, carried out by the Lorena family at the end of the 1780's. The entire border line, also in this particularly demanding strech, not only was delineated on paper (with a wide production of maps realised by cartography engineers of the two states) but was also identified on the land by cylindrical stones, numbered and traceable on the maps, situated at a short distance from each other. These "boundary stones", solidly embeded in the ground, are still traceable and visible also in this part of the border which concerned three state realities: as well as the Grand Dukedom of Tuscany, the State of the Church and the Dukedom of Modena. |
| "O
POVERI SOLDATI" ("Oh poor soldiers") |
|
 It is one of the folk songs of the Pistoiese Mountain handed down, collected in the Rivoreta area, probably dating back to the government of Ferdinando III of Hbsburg-Lorena (1814-1824). The text (published in Folk songs of the pistoiese province, recording and texts, by care of S.Landini and M. Landini, Pistoia 1978) retains the remembrance of the suffering of the soldiers assigned to guarding the borders, submitted to solitude and hard living conditions on the high Apennine ridge.  |
| THE
LEGENDS OF LAKE SCAFFAIOLO |
|
 This
small lake, inserted in an environment without vegetation near the ridge
on rough and windswept mountains, has always aroused particular curiosity,
for the very same characteristics that make it, if not quite a unique case,
certainly special.From its location at such high altitude for the Apennines, to its sterility, lacking as it is of lake vegetation and fish, from its colour, to the strange atmospheric phenomenae that  often
appear without warning. These characterisitics in the past have nourished,
among the mountain people, myths and legends about the lake ennobled by
the pen of Boccaccio. This is reminded to us by Tigri, who, after declaring
how looking at such a lake causes great surprise and a pleasant feeling,
writes about "a very old tradition, narrated also by Boccaccio in his
bookof the lakes and rivers, [according to which] from the bottom of it
a tremendous squall is raised every time someone throws a stone in it"
(G. Tigri, Guideof the Pistoiese mountain, Pistoia 1868).Myths and legends that fed the people's fantasy, also reminded to us by Tigri, attributed to the spirits of the lake the dreadful landslide that destroyed the whole village of Lizzano in 1814. (The Scaffaiolo, yesterday and today. History and legend, elves and mountaineers two steps from home, by P. Foschi, Bologna 1997) |
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| THE
DEVELOPMENT OF TOURISM |
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Since
the last decades of the 19th century, thanks to the useful links assured
by the Porrettana railway and the road of Ximenes, the resorts of the
High Pistoiese Appenines, particularly dear to the foreign residents and
the high classes of Firenze and Bologna, have become tour destinations
and mountain resorts, establishing themselves amoungst the most well-known
and equipped summer resorts of central Italy.. 
In the
nineteenth-century guides to the Pistoiese mountains, published from the
seventies on by Giuseppe Tigri and by Francesco Carega di Muricce under
the auspices of the florentine section of the Italian Alpine Club, there
was not a lack of historical and naturalistic observations, visiting itineraries
and descriptions of climbs to the Apennine peaks. Between the recommended
excursions, an important place was reserved for the trip to the Scaffaiolo
Lake, where already in 1878 a "shelter cabin" had been built
for mountaineers. 
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