The outermost part of the Upper Potenza Valley, with its eight hamlets in the municipality of Fiuminata, is a truly unique place. We are at the foot of Mount Pennino, and this small enclave in the Upper Macerata region has a single access road that ends right at the base of the mountain. These tiny, almost completely uninhabited settlements are a symbol of the abandonment of the land. Until the late 1960s, this was a relatively populated area. There were two small shops that sold everything from groceries to small household items. There were elementary schools and a post office. Now, except on holidays and during the Ferragosto holiday when homes—now used only for vacations—reopen, silence reigns almost everywhere.
It is a region where biodiversity thrives. In the Upper Potenza Valley, agriculture meant primarily sheep farming. Today, as in the past, crops are almost entirely limited to the white bean of Laverino, a highly prized variety that is sown in the “canapine”—small plots along the river once used to grow hemp for textile purposes. Here, industrial agriculture—with its increasingly widespread use of chemicals—has never taken hold, partly because its introduction coincided with the abandonment of the land, thereby preserving these mountains from pollution.
Among the animals that inhabit these mountains are numerous roe deer, foxes, porcupines, and wild boars.
The Upper Potenza Valley is crisscrossed by an extensive network of trails stretching from Monte Pennino, with its beech forests, to Monte Vermenone, where a magnificent plateau opens up, as well as by a cycling loop highly prized by mountain bikers known as the “Giro dei Quattro Passi.”
It’s not just nature but also precious cultural treasures: Santa Maria di Laverino, a 12th-century parish church entirely covered in frescoes—notably including *The Martyrdom of St. John the Evangelist* by Girolamo di Matteo da Gualdo—and the Rocca di Santa Lucia, a small castle founded in 1020 by Monaldo III, the Lombard count of Nocera, which can be reached by a one-hour walk through the woods. Two destinations just waiting to be discovered.
