In Arcola you file your council paperwork inside a castle: the palazzo on piazza Ugo Muccini, beside the old Obertenghi tower, is the same structure that guarded the village in feudal times. Its construction is tied to Arcola's revival from the 11th century onwards under the Obertenghi, after the raids and sackings brought first by the Normans and then by the Saracens: it was they who made it one of the most important defensive centres of the early Middle Ages in this stretch of the Val di Magra.
What to see
The castle occupies the highest point of the old town, a village perched above the lower Val di Magra, and has to be read together with the Obertenghi tower that rises beside it: the two worked as a single system. Its present appearance comes out of the 1884 restoration, carried out to a design by the engineer Canini as a deliberately conservative intervention; since then the building has housed the town hall.
The list of owners is long. The Obertenghi were succeeded in the 13th century by the Malaspina, and Genoese pressure dates from those years: in 1278 Oberto Doria laid siege, and the tall tower was drawn into the assaults as well. After the conquest the Malaspina sold the castle to the Republic of Genoa. In 1320 it was taken by Castruccio Castracani, lord of Lucca; in 1430 it fell to the Duke of Milan Filippo Maria Visconti, through his Perugian commander Nicolò Piccinino. In 1436 it returned to the Genoese and became the seat of the Podesteria of Arcola and Vezzano. At the end of the 18th century, during the Napoleonic wars, clashes between Franco-Genoese and Austro-Russian armies and the shelling that came with them left serious damage to both castle and tower.
Visiting
Arcola is easy to reach from the Val di Magra plain, but the old town has to be taken on foot: the streets are narrow and uphill, and piazza Ugo Muccini opens out at the top. Since this is a working town hall, the interior follows office hours and is not a visitor route; the best of it is outside anyway, in the relationship between the bulk of the palazzo, the tower and the roofs dropping towards the river.
Our editors' tip
We come on a weekday morning, when the village is at work and the square is alive without being crowded, and we give half an hour to a full circuit around the castle block: from behind, the 19th-century rebuilding and what survives of the defensive layout both read more clearly. Then we drop a few lanes downhill and turn round: from there the castle and the tower present themselves as they appeared to anyone coming up from below, which is to say to anyone who meant to take them.