The best cycling routes around Podenzana

The Road is repaired and can be passed normally ( 09.June 2026)

Medici Fountain

You can pass through by bicycle, but be careful, I passed through on 19/07/25 and you have to be careful, it is safe to pass but be careful!

A very easy and pleasant ride. Much of the route follows secondary roads with very little traffic. Splendid views of Fosdinovo Castle, the mouth of the Magra River, and the Bay of La Spezia.

Perhaps the best preserved in Lunigiana, high on the hill overlooking the Magra plain. Still belonging to the Malaspina descendants, it has dominated the town since the 12th century and is at the center of numerous legends. With a quadrangular plan, it has four round towers, a semicircular bastion, two internal courtyards, patrol walkways from which you can see the sea and an outpost in the direction of the village. It was originally protected by a drawbridge. The fortress appears as a medieval structure, in fact expanded in the 14th century by Spinetta and Galeotto Malaspina and renovated several times over the centuries. The main entrance welcomes us with a marble shield depicting a dog with a flowering thorn in its mouth, symbol of the friendship between the Malaspina and the Scaligeri of Verona. From the top of the castle you can see the elongated structure of the village, arranged along the hill. There are many legendary stories about the castle of Fosdinovo: from Bianca Malaspina to the Marquise Cristina Pallavicini The Marquise Cristina Pallavicini, who governed the fiefdom for a long time after the death of her husband Ippolito, seems to have been an evil and lustful woman and had the habit of throwing her lovers from the trapdoor at the foot of the bed in her trap room with the torture chamber below. Another legend linked to the castle of Fosdinovo and much older than that of the Marquise Bianca Maria Aloisia, daughter of the Marquis Malaspina, who fell in love with the stableman of the castle and, because of this feeling, was walled up alive together with a wild boar, a symbol of rebellion against the family, and a dog, a symbol of loyalty towards the beloved. Legend has it that, walking through the castle, you can still perceive the presence of the unfortunate princess! Another reason to visit the Malaspina castle is the fact that tradition has it that the “great poet” Dante Alighieri stayed in its rooms, called to Lunigiana in 1306 by the Marquis Franceschino Malaspina.

Fosdinovo is located in the Lower Magra Valley, north of the Luni plain, on the border between Tuscany and Liguria. It probably owes its name to "Faucenova", new mouth, a probable reference to a new road that opened from the sea towards the interior. The village is a small treasure chest of art, always a gateway to the historic region of Lunigiana, among its streets you can perceive the air of the border: you can smell the sea, you can breathe the mountains. Since 2014 Fosdinovo, with its perfectly preserved castle-fortress, has been one of the Orange Flag villages of the Italian Touring Club. The undisputed symbol of Fosdinovo is the beautiful Malaspina Castle, which stands on top of the mountain and the town, establishing itself as one of the most beautiful and best preserved fortresses in Lunigiana

Called the town of a hundred villages, for the numerous hamlets that compose it, it has ancient origins even if it acquired importance first with the Malaspina family in the Middle Ages and then with the Medici in the Renaissance, the latter called it the 'beautiful corner of Florence. It preserves an important historical center, protected and enclosed by the Medici walls, erected by Cosimo I in 1540, where there is a succession of noble palaces that flow into the Medici square, characterized by the elegant baroque fountain in marble and pietra serena, which overlooks the church dedicated to Saints James the Apostle and Anthony from the 14th century and enlarged in the 16th, with three naves marked by sandstone columns and with inside a beautiful baptismal font bearing the coat of arms of the Spino Fiorito of the Malaspina.

by bike you pass