Fanano

The town sits in the upper Frignano district, fifty-five kilometers southwest of Bologna and inside the Parco del Frignano. It was founded in the eighth century by Anselmo, brother-in-law of the Lombard king Aistulf, who built the Monastero del Santissimo Salvatore and a Benedictine hospice on the trade route linking Modena and Tuscany. The Este family ruled from the eleventh century and expanded the cross-Apennine commerce that had shaped the settlement from its founding.

That commerce is bound up with the stone: Fanano is known as the città della pietra, and its sandstone workshops, still active today, grew out of a place that existed to move goods and people across the mountains rather than to sit apart from them. The centro storico, the churches, and the clock tower cluster together at 640 meters, while the territory climbs to Monte Cimone and the ridges shared with the neighbouring communes of the Modenese Apennines. A monastic foundation on a trade route became, over centuries, a stone-carving town ringed by the highest peaks of the northern Apennines.