This village used to be called Castiglione dei Gatti, Castiglione of the Cats, and the name was changed in 1863 in memory of its feudal past: after the unification of Italy it chose to name itself after its own lords. The Pepoli had arrived in 1340, when Giacomo and Giovanni, sons of Taddeo Pepoli, bought from count Ubaldino degli Alberti of Mangona the castle of Castiglione dei Gatti, part of Baragazza and other lands; before them had come the Alberti of Prato and Mangone. Of the medieval castle, the Castellaccio or Citerna, which stood on the hill above the village, nothing remains: the Bolognesi destroyed it in 1317. The village lies in the Bolognese Apennines, right against the Tuscan border, on one of the roads that linked Bologna to Prato, and it is for that position that it has always counted: its history is half Emilian and half Tuscan.
Two things here are worth the journey, and neither of them is old. The first is under the mountain: the comune was served by a railway station built inside the great Apennine tunnel, on the Bologna-Florence direttissima. It was called Precedenze, it is disused today, and to reach it you went through a tunnel inclined at twenty-seven degrees to the horizon, fitted with one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three steps, which came out at the place called Cà di Landino. The second is in via Bolognese: the military cemetery where five hundred and two South African dead of the Second World War lie, and at the Paolo Guidotti cultural centre there is a room devoted to the South African memorial. For the rest there are the chestnut and fir woods, the sanctuary of the Beata Vergine delle Grazie di Boccadirio, and the artificial lake of Santa Maria, built in 1917 on the Brasimone stream and part of the hydroelectric system of the Suviana and Brasimone reservoirs, today a regional park. At the southern edge of the territory, since 1938, the Cottede weather station has been at work.
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📅 Every year, on 10 August, in the main town
Castiglione dei Pepoli celebrates Saint Lawrence on 10 August, in the church dedicated to him; the hamlets have their own patrons, such as Saint Mamas in Lagaro and Saint Roch in Rasora.
📅 Every year, officially on the first Sunday of September, in Lagaro
In Lagaro, a hamlet of Castiglione dei Pepoli, Saint Mamas is celebrated, officially on the first Sunday of September.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Castiglione dei Pepoli, but an easy day trip away.
