Official Tourism Board for the valley of Mugello welcomes you in Mugello, Tuscany, where you can spend your holidays next to Florence.

On Sunday 23rd. April (editor’s note 1893) the entire railway line Faenza-Florence will be inaugurated… tomorrow Faenza and the hospitable Romagna will stretch out their brotherly hand to the friendly Florence and the cultured Tuscany, and celebrating happily and united their long-awaited reapproachment, they will show their firm and steady wish that from the drilled Apennines a new inspiration of culture and well-being will reach them along with the powerful steam-engine.
(passage from the poster of the Commune of Faenza)

The year 1893 was an unforgettable year for Tuscany and Romagna: finally the railway had tamed the mountain and permited the connection of the two seas and the two ports: the Tyrrhenian Sea with Leghorn and the Adriatic Sea with Ravenna.

The 101 kilometre long railway strarted from S.Maria Novella Station in Florence and after sixteen intermediate stations (among which Vaglia, S. Piero, Borgo S. Lorenzo, Ronta, Marradi, Brisighella), it reached Faenza.

The railway was rich of works of art: the splendid bridge on the stream Trillero (between Panicaglia and Ronta) all in “pietra serena” (a grey stone from Firenzuola) with splays in arches lowered by 36 metres and with other eight small lights; the road bridges on the Buggiano, on the Rio Morto and of the Poggio and the very beautiful rail bridges on the Lamone and on the Faentina main road at Marradi which is 199 metres long, are extraordinary monuments of the Italian railway engineering.

On the 30th June 1913, the 32 kilometre long stretch Borgo S. Lorenzo-Pontassieve was opened to create a more practical connection of the Faentina to the Florence-Rome line and to central Italy.

The stations of Vicchio, Dicomano, Contea-Londa and Rufina had been placed on the way: every now and then the line passed very close to the left and right banks of the river Sieve.

In 1944-45, the Germans in a withdrawal, systematically destroyed the stretch Florence-Borgo S. Lorenzo; bridges, rail bridges and tunnels were blown up by mines charged with TNT and other explosives.

The lines Borgo S. Lorenzo-Faenza and Borgo S. Lorenzo-Pontassieve were brought back to move in the years following the war while the reconstruction of the Faentina section Borgo S. Lorenzo-Florence was started only in the 80s and on the 14th January 1999 the railway was officially put back into service.

We want to make you know a strip of the Tuscan and Romagna land known on board of a “slow” train which allows the traveller to spend a relaxing holiday completely immersed in nature and out of the big traffic.

The Faentina railway offers the possibility to penetrate two big cities of art like Florence and Ravenna and in the meantime to stop in the Mugello Sieve Valley and in the valley of the Lamone where still pure landscapes of enchantry attraction offer the tourist particular itineraries on foot, by bicycle or by bus.