San Godenzo

San Godenzo lies at the foot of Monte Falterona, on the road that climbs from Florence over the Apennines towards Romagna, and it is one of the gateways to the Casentine Forests park. The village grew up around the abbey of San Gaudenzio, founded in 1028 by the bishop of Fiesole Jacopo il Bavaro, whose church was rebuilt and reconsecrated in 1070. The place belonged to the Guidi counts, who handed it over to Florence in 1344.

But the date that matters here is 1302. In that year, in this very village, the exiled Ghibellines held the meeting at which they came to terms with the Guidi and the Ubertini against Florence: among those present was a White Guelph driven out of the city only a few months earlier, Dante Alighieri. Another hamlet gave a painter his name: Andrea del Castagno came from Castagno d'Andrea. The coat of arms is curious too — adopted around the middle of the nineteenth century, it brings together the national colours, the lily of Florence and the cross of Savoy, yet the municipal statute describes it in colours other than the traditional ones, blue instead of green and a gold lily instead of a red one.