The Val di Lima abounds in castles as befits an area which is at the boundary between one former power and another. Pistoia, Florence, Pisa and Este have all fought over this area in the past. ‘Limes’ is Latin for boundary and, apart from the name of our river, its root forms the basis for at least one local village name, for example, Limano.

The problem is that the majority of these castles lie in ruins and are often overgrown so that one has to tramp through spiky undergrowth to reach them. The only truly visible castle is that at Lucchio and even Lucchio is largely ruinous. To see completer defences one has to travel up the Serchio valley. There one came come across such marvels as Verrucole castle and forte Mont’Alfonso.

We have to distinguish between castles and forts. The definition of a castle is that of a defensive building erected before the advent of firepower with high walls, bastions and machicolations. A fort, on the other hand, doesn’t date much earlier than the sixteenth century and has lower, thicker. more slanted walls, no machicolations and is built to resist canons and muskets.

There are remnants of other castles in the Val di Lima, for example at Casoli and also on the hill above the Pieve di Controni but do not expect Italian versions of Caernarvon castle. The most you’ll come across is remains of cyclopic masonry which are often incorporated in more recent dwelling.

Benabbio’s castle has been the subject in recent years of considerable archaeological research by the University of Pisa. It was, therefore, with great interest that we participated in an open day at the castle yesterday.

There are two ways to approach the castle. First there’s a steep footpath which takes one through Benabbio village and into the chestnut forest above. Second there’s a do-able track on a 4 X 4 vehicle a little distance outside Benabbio, starting at the little chapel of the Madonna on the way to the Trebbio pass.

We used the second route, hitched a lift up and then walked down afterwards (around half-an-hour).

We were too late for the grigliata festa but this didn’t matter anyway as we’d already eaten. A very knowledgeable young lad showed us around the church dedicated to Saint Michael the archangel which once was in the castle and, indeed, formed part of its walls

We’d been to the church before when a shock discovery in the churchyard revealed remains of many corpses who died of the ‘morbo asiatico’, in other words cholera. My theory is that this disease was not locally transmitted through the water supply (as was the case in London) but by soldiers returning to their village after fighting the Crimean war in the 1850’s. (A contingent of Italian soldiers had been sent at the invitation of Emperor Napoleon III in the hope that the Piedmontese government would get support from France to fight the Austrians, regain Lombardy and thence, Italian unification. The funerary stones state that the soldiers landed at Genoa. That wasn’t the only place they caught the disease: the majority of soldiers in the Crimea didn’t die from bullet wounds but were in fact victims of cholera, successfully cured by the famous lady of the lamp, Florence Nightingale.

(I wrote an article for the Corriere di Bagni di Lucca on this very theme in 2006 which I’ve now copied onto Facebook if you can read Italian).

To return to happier subjects. The church of San Michele has been beautifully restored with its wonderful timber beam roof masterfully rebuilt according to traditional methods. It’s not often that this church is open to the public and, indeed this was the first time I’d entered into this remarkably spacious structure which was Benabbio’s original church.

The Vicaria Della Val di Lima were at the castle greeting us up with deafening shots of their harquebuses.

There were refreshments, a tombola (bingo) session and a very friendly atmosphere permeated the castle. One substantial wall of this former stronghold the Lupari family remains. I wish it could have spoken of its former times to us!

Benabbio is definitely a village to linger in and there’s history and stories around its every corner. For example, did you know that Benabbio has its own theatre, the ‘Eden’, dating back to 1780, where such Italian greats as Totò appeared on the stage and where the audience included Elisa Baciocchi, princess of Lucca and Napoleon’s sister. Certainly the theatrical link continues to this day since Dutch film star Thekla Simona Gelsomina Reuten’s mother hails from Benabbio. (Thekla, who visits Benabbio on a regular basis has acted on BBC television too : ‘Hidden’, ‘Restless’).