Type: naturalistic, historical, and cultural
Approximate distance: 36 km
This itinerary crosses the most mystical and identity-defining slope of Monte Amiata, where the natural dimension of the mountain intertwines with one of the most unique religious and social experiences in 19th-century Italy. It starts from Santa Fiora, gradually leaving the village to enter a compact wooded environment, made of silence, shade, and paths that invite slowing down.
🌲 Monte Amiata Wildlife Park: the mountain as a space for connection
The first stop is the Monte Amiata Wildlife Park, an area that restores the most natural and lived-in side of the Amiata. Extensive woods, trails, and observation areas allow the mountain to be read as a place traversed and inhabited, frequented today for trekking and outdoor activities, but historically also perceived as a space of isolation, reflection, and retreat.
🗼 Giurisdavidica Tower and David Lazzaretti: a vision born from the mountain
Climbing towards Monte Labbro, you encounter the Giurisdavidica Tower, a symbolic place linked to the figure of David Lazzaretti (known as “Il Santo David”). Born in Arcidosso in the first half of the nineteenth century, Lazzaretti was a charismatic preacher and reformer who developed, right on these mountains, a spiritual and social vision based on justice, community, and moral renewal.
The territory that welcomed him was densely inhabited: the nearby hamlet of Zancona, a small mountain village along the stream of the same name, was one of the centers where Lazzaretti spent a lot of time among the country people, gathering disciples and adherents to his cause. Almost all the priests of the Giurisdavidica community after his death came from here, and the archive of the followers was preserved in the hamlet, testifying to the importance of these places in the history of that movement.
📚 Arcidosso: memory, community, and social history
The stop in Arcidosso allows for a deeper understanding of the Giurisdavidica story through the David Lazzaretti Study Center, which documents the movement not as a folkloric curiosity, but as a religious, social, and political phenomenon rooted in the context of 19th-century Amiata. Here the narrative is completed, restoring the link between landscape, rural poverty, collective aspirations, and social tensions that have crossed this territory.
