Camporgiano

The golden tower in the coat of arms is the keep of the fortress, and the flag flying on it says that Camporgiano was a vicaria, that is, it governed the Garfagnana on someone else's behalf: the stronghold, raised around the year one thousand, was strengthened by the Lucchese in the fourteenth century and rebuilt by the Este in the fifteenth, who kept their captain of justice here. Ludovico Ariosto, the duke's commissioner in the Garfagnana, came several times.

The keep now holds a museum of ceramics, and it is worth knowing where they come from: nearly all were pulled out of two rubbish wells dug between the fortress curtain and the walls of the village, emptied during the restoration. They range from the early fifteenth century to the full seventeenth: Faenza majolica, incised earthenware, the plates that somebody in their day threw away broken.