Abetone in Tuscany

The town of Abetone is certainly one of the "highest" in Tuscany with its altitude of 1,388 m. a.s.l. This small town of 700 inhabitants, where the "Piramidi" by Leonardo Ximenes and the church of San Leopoldo can be admired, has tied its name to the features of its ski champions. Skiing has been practised here since the first years of the XX century..

The first actual settlement in the area of Abetone dates to the XVIII century, but many historians agree on the possibility that Hannibal had chosen this pass of the Apennine in the ancient times. While he was crossing Italy towards Rome (217 B.C.), this Carthusian leader decided to climb the mountains in Pistoia because he could rely on the support given to him by the Boii Gauls who were his allies and rulers of the Emilia area near the Apennines to march at a distance from the Lunigiana governed by the Consul Sempronius.
The birth of this chief town dates to the treaty between the Estensi and the Lorraine for the construction of a track linking Emilia with Tuscany through the mountains where Abetone should have been a refreshment area. Yet, the road created between 1766 and 1779 did not develop the commercial traffics that the two rulers had imagined. At the time of the Unity of Italy in 1860, the importance of the town had already totally decayed. In 1782, the parish church of San Leopoldo was built, but the village was still a small settlement of lumberjacks.
Tourism was the real drive of Abetone's economy in the following years. In the second half of the XIX century, the town started to become the destination of many Florentine and foreign nobles who crowded it in the summertime to spend their holidays and avoiding the hot weather also enjoying the peace and beauty of the woods surrounding the town. The trend of holidays was flanked by ski, a sport a Florentine aristocrat had imported here after he had seen it in Norway. This is how Abetone became one of the most renowned ski centres in Italy and many great ski champions such as Zeno Colò came from here.