THE CASTLE in GRANAGLIONE ULTRA HD 4K mountain village in the Tuscan Emilian Apennines

Province of Bologna (68 km)
Altitude 600-800 mt. slm
Name of inhabitants Granaglionesi
Patron Saint Saint Nicholas - 6 December
A CASTLE AMONG THE CLOUDS
Immersed in the greenery of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, between Bologna, Pistoia and Florence, there is a small "Castle in the clouds", a dwelling of other times that has regained its former glory.
fairly frequent from the end of August to the first days of the new year, they transform the Castle of Granaglione into an enchanted lighthouse that stands in the clouds of this ephemeral milk-colored ocean.
From the Castle it is possible to admire the ancient villages of Granaglione, in its entirety, as well as those of Campèda and the Sanctuary of the Madonna di Calvigi. The Castle rises inside a vast park, populated by spruce trees, from which also a pure water spring gushes out, of which it is possible to enjoy the diuretic properties directly from the taps of the house. Spread over two floors, it has six large bedrooms, two living rooms, three bathrooms and a kitchen. It is a versatile building, suitable for different uses. The furnishings, reduced to the essentials, leave space for any type of recreational or cultural activity.
The Castello di Granaglione is an exceptional place that lends itself to weddings, congresses, settings for various types of cinema and television, historical re-enactments, exhibitions, dinner with crime, dinners in the dark, meetings for role-playing games, Softair tournaments, long hiking in the woods and much more. The only limit is the imagination, but it is enough to free it and make it fly high in the sky, above the Castle in the clouds.
BACKGROUND
The first historical references relating to the Castle of Granaglione date back as far as 200 BC. when the Romans, now aware of their growing military and war superiority, began to subdivide the ager gallicus, east of the Galli Boii, starting a long period of bloody clashes that saw the whole of northern Italy as the scene of bloody battles for several centuries . This led to the emergence of the first fortified outposts for reporting barbaric attacks and ensuring the security of traveling troops. The first traces of the current Castello di Granaglione date back to this period, destroyed several times and rebuilt at the same point.
The inhabited center of Granaglione had origins around the tenth century, it belonged to the territory of the lordship of the Stagnesi; the castle built in rather recent times and used during the Middle Ages as a signal tower in coordination with other positions on the ridges of the Apennines [no source]. The village, located at 780 m. it is divided into some recognizable hamlets, whose denomination can be traced back to their morphological position: Valli, Villa, Rio, Malsasso, Montagna, Barbacano, Poggiolo, Bovecchia and Valle. Until the sixties Granaglione was a village of transhumant shepherds who, during the cool summer season, brought the flocks back to graze in the mountains from the Tuscan plains.
In the hamlet called Bovecchia it is possible to admire the so-called Piazza Navona, a small square located in the heart of the same village surrounded by houses with a particular and characteristic vault.
Granaglione consists of ten villages located in a semicircle near the parish church of S. Nicolò. Cited for the first time as "Garnaione" in documents of the years 1211/33 preserved in the State Archives of Florence, the toponym seems to derive from the words "wheat" and "grains", but more careful authors have taken the root instead Germanic, enclosed in the verb "waren" which means "to look carefully" and then translated into "garrison".
The word is therefore symptomatic of the passage in the high valleys of the Reno of the Lombards, a people who remained here until the Franks of Pepin the Short defeated their king Astolfo (VIII century). In 1211, following bloody struggles, the inhabitants of Granaglione swore allegiance to Pistoia, but hostilities for the possession of this territory continued until Pope Gregory IX succeeded in convincing the Pistoiese to cede Granaglione to Bologna.
The Church of S. Nicolò, whose earliest records date back to 1220, holds within it a wooden crucifix of fifteenth-century origins. Also noteworthy is the old Marconi house: the building, formerly the residence of many Marconi families and in particular that of Giuseppe, father of the scientist Guglielmo, will become the site of collections and documentation of local traditions.
Granaglione is also known for the tradition of chestnut processing, which can be traced back to a visit to the Chestnut Educational Park, the Beltaine micro brewery and the xiloteca.