San Romano in Garfagnana

Above the village stands the fortress of Verrucole, watching over the whole upper Serchio valley. In the Middle Ages the territory was split in two: to the north the Gherardinghi held sway, masters of Verrucole, to the south the counts of Bacciano, whose castle is gone. A local legend says San Romano was born out of the destruction of two castles, Boglio and Meschiana: the people who came down from them are said to have made the village. From the fifteen hundreds until the unification of Italy the Garfagnana belonged to the Este, and this municipality with it.

The Garfagnana farms trout, and at Villetta there is the cooperative where the fish from six farms in the area is brought. The trout from here has one particularity: it is not treated with antibiotics, because in these waters certain diseases do not occur. In 2007 the municipal library moved into palazzo Pelliccioni-Marazzini, whose first floor also holds the permanent exhibition of local archaeology; it is named after don Polimio Bacci, who had been its librarian and left it his local collection.