Zuccarello

Zuccarello was founded by the Clavesana family in 1248, who made the castle overlooking the feudal centre of the valley; then the Del Carretto family took over and, in 1625, the Republic of Genoa.

A small, partly walled village, once protected by the castle, the walls and the rocky bank of the Neva. It has a single narrow main street flanked by porticoes with arches and pillars in the Ligurian-Piedmontese style, softened by trompe l'oeil paintings and linking the two turreted gates to which the curtain walls descending from the hill of the castle were connected.

The Roman bridge (in reality mediaeval, as can be deduced from the hump-backed architecture) is impressive. The parish church of St Bartholomew with an ancient bell tower with double and triple lancet windows in local stone is also mediaeval. On the inside is a painting by Orazio De Ferrari from the first half of the 17th century ("Madonna with Child and Saints", first half of the 17th century) and a 19th-century processional chest. Zuccarello , however, also has a somewhat romantic background that is linked to the story of Ilaria Del Carretto, who was born here, grew up in the halls of Zuccarello Castle (now in ruins) and then married Paolo Giunigi, a lord of Lucca, where Ilaria moved and died in childbirth prematurely. Today Ilaria is honoured in the well-known sculpture by Jacopo Della Quercia at the Cathedral of Lucca.