Castelnuovo di Garfagnana

Castelnuovo chose its master so as not to be given one. In 1429, while Florence was pushing into the Garfagnana and besieging Lucca, the town submitted of its own accord to Niccolò d'Este of Ferrara: it escaped Lucca, avoided Florentine conquest and in exchange became the capital of the new Este province of the Garfagnana. The old capital, Castiglione, stayed loyal to Lucca and ended up a fortified enclave surrounded by Este land. Into the fortress, today called Ariostesca, Alfonso I sent Ludovico Ariosto as ducal commissioner; Alfonso II had the stronghold of Mont'Alfonso built above the town, and a Modena regulation of 1852 still lists the local measures: the barile of Castelnuovo, the sacco, the braccio, the libbra, the pertica, the mezzino. Only in 1923 did the town pass to the province of Lucca, closing a circle seven centuries long.

Between 1941 and 1943 the town was a place of civilian internment for some seventy Jewish refugees, many of them families with children: they were put up in private houses and in the fortress of Mont'Alfonso, and a room at La Barchetta was rented as a synagogue and as a school for the youngest. On 8 September 1943 everything changed. On 4 December almost all the internees were arrested and taken to the provincial camp at Bagni di Lucca, and from there deported to Auschwitz: of the whole group, two came back.