Getting to the Antica Trattoria dell’Eremita is not easy. From the town of Gallicano in the Garfagnana you follow a freakishly twisty, narrow little road uphill towards the Eremo di Calomini. It is the Italian custom to beep your little horn before you brave each blind hairpin, but here you might as well lean on the thing the whole darn way.
We eventually reached the parking lot at the Eremo and strolled over to Antica Trattoria dell’Eremita. It’s just down a little strada bianca, a white road of more or less one lane. Our friends parked below, and walked up the steep stairs.
We meet at the top. “Dori and I were thinking that this looks just like someplace in Hawaii,” Robert said upon greeting us.
Yes, lush, green and fragrant in a drizzle, the place had that Shangri-La thing going on.
But let’s talk about that roasted trout up there, shall we? It didn’t seem very Italian, covered with all those herbs. You wouldn’t be surprised to see such a thing in Provence, but this is a tiny corner of unknown Tuscany, not Provence.
The more you learn about “Italian” food, the more things on a plate rise up and slap you in the face, demanding further research.
Monastic outposts relied on herbs for medicinal purposes. There was a reason the Eremo was placed where it was, including the abundance of water that gushed from the rocks all around. This water has, they say, curative powers as well.
So, on with research. More herbs:
Today I went to the Sagra della Minestrella di Gallicano. Minestrella is a soup of wild herbs and beans made only in Gallicano, a town of fewer than 4,000 people. Today it is the southernmost town in the Garfagnana. ~ Why the Garfagnana?
So there is a cultural reason for so many herbs, even though it seems to break the cucina povera tradition of simple preparations with few ingredients.
Antica Trattoria dell’Eremita is your chance to see what this whole thing is all about. You can eat the special bread of Gallicano called focaccia leva, thick flat bread cooked between two iron plates to be eaten with cold cuts and the restaurant’s smoked trout (they raise their own trout here!). They also raise farro, which appears in the farro soup. You can taste or buy eggs from their free-range chickens. You can buy packets of the dried herbs they collect from along the little white road. Then, when you’re totally stuffed, you can go visit the Eremo. When you do, note the chapel carved out of the hillside.
Then you hit the road. Don’t forget the horn. Blow for all it’s worth.
Map of Lago di Vagli and Eramo di Calomini
The destinations mentioned in this article have red markers. Lago di Vagli is a basin created when a dam was built, holding back the water, which covered a small, medieval city called Fabbriche di Carreggine in 1946. Every ten years or so they drain the basin for maintenance, and an instant tourist destination fills the basin with folks out for a rare experience.
It’s not easy to find out when the next maintenance will take place. Since 1994, The dam’s owner Enel has not emptied the basin since 1994 and there have been no official announcements about when it will happen again.
For now, visitors to Lago di Vagli will have to content themselves with other attractions, starting with the suspension footbridge opened in 2016. Spanning 459 feet between two sides of the lake, the bridge also features a 32-foot section made of glass at the center revealing the lake underneath. If that’s not enough adrenaline, aim for the zip line that will send you flying over the lake at up to 80 miles an hour. The mountainous region is also threaded by miles of hiking trails at all levels and lengths, offering panoramic views of the Alps and Apennines, as well as ancient buildings and petroglyphs. — The eerie but beautiful ghost town hidden beneath Italy’s Vagli Lake