Pontremoli is the northernmost comune of Tuscany, at the far end of the Lunigiana, where the Verde torrent runs into the Magra and where one of the oldest roads between the Po plain, Liguria and Tuscany goes through. The name says a bridge. The most credited hypothesis is from the Latin pontem populus tremula, that is a bridge over the Magra, gone today, built from the wood of the trembling poplar, which indeed stands in the arms, first of the family and then of the comune; according to another reading the tremula comes instead from the precariousness of that bridge, in a place the floods have always struck. But there is a newer and wider hypothesis: Pontremoli, like many other border place names along the Lombard frontier, would come from the Germanic thramuz, which means edge, margin, limit, and the name would have meant bridge on the border. The same root is found going up the peninsula — Tremoli in Calabria, Tramutola in Basilicata, Tremoleto in the province of Pisa, Tramin in Alto Adige, the Val Tremola at the St Gotthard — and the Lombards called this region the Door of Tuscany.
Half of Europe has gone over that bridge. In the itinerary of Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury, written at the end of the tenth century, Pontremoli is the thirty-first stage and is called Pontremel; towards the middle of the twelfth century another Benedictine monk, Nikulás Bergsson, who came from Iceland and was bound for Jerusalem, took the same road and noted his stop here in the account he called Leiðarvísir. In 1167 the people of Pontremoli stood against Frederick Barbarossa and blocked his passage over the Cisa. Above the town stands the castle of the Piagnaro, which takes its name from the piagne, the stone slabs of the roofs: it was attacked and rebuilt many times, and its military history ended in 1790, when grand duke Pietro Leopoldo handed the comune the last cannon so that it might melt down the bronze and make of it the civic bell. Today it holds the museum of the Lunigiana statue stelae. And the passing goes on in another form: since 1953 the booksellers of Pontremoli have awarded the Bancarella prize, on the second Sunday of July.
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📅 Every year, on 31 January, with the age-old Bonfire Challenge against the San Nicolò district
Pontremoli celebrates Saint Geminianus on 31 January, with the lighting of the traditional bonfires. In the age-old Disfida dei Falò, the San Geminiano district challenges the San Nicolò district, lighting giant bonfires on the banks of the Magra river and the Verde stream.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Pontremoli, but an easy day trip away.
