Sestino

Enchanting views carved between the profiles of the Apennine Mountains. Hiking and mountain biking trails run along the valley, go through woods, meadows and clearings, and go into smaller towns such as Monterone, San Donato and Case Barboni. Sestino is an outpost of Valtiberina lying in the heart of the Apennines, rich in nature reserves and protected areas.

A crossroads with millennial history, a strategic node for those who since ancient times crossed the Valtiberina or those who came down from the Padana plains in the north. The imprint of all these people is imprinted in its land: Etruscans, Piceni, Umbri, Galli Senoni and finally the Romans who made it into a city, a municipium with its judicial court, temples and spas.

The heroic exploits of its people, in particular of the families of the Volusenes and of the Cesii and of the luster given to Sestino by the high military offices that they occupied, are engraved in many stone plaques. The local travertine slabs are now exhibited in the National Museum and Antiquarium.

There was a period of splendour and prosperity during the rule of the lords of Florence under Cosimo dei Medici. The famous fortress, located on the highest and unspoiled peak of Sasso di Simone, within the Sasso Simone and Simoncello Nature Park, is a strategic place where it is possible to send signals to Rome and to see the territories of Dalmatia beyond the Adriatic. Built as a stronghold to defend the surrounding borders, in a place where the Lombards and Benedictine monks had tried in vain to occupy but who failed due to the harsh territory and the difficulties reaching the summit.  The perfect city of Cosimo dei Medici was abandoned and dismantled at the end of the sixteenth century.

Today, the village of Sestino preserves examples of sacred art and valuable religious architecture. Like the church of San Gianni dated 1297 but probably older. Or like the church of San Pancrazio, built between the 9th and the 10th century on top of the ruins of the ancient Roman curia, but restructured several times. It houses a charming Byzantine crypt, two crucifixes by the Rimini school (14th century), a canvas of the Natività con Santi and Adorazione dei Magi (17th century), La Stigmata di San Francesco and Martirio di San Pancrazio (XVIII century).

In 1125 Pope Onorio II in a letter to Pietro, bishop of Montefeltro, Santa Maria di Piego is documented as the first church of Montefeltro. The shrine of a simple stone structure, on the occasion of the jubilee in 2000 was inserted into an itinerary called "La via Romea di Arte Contemporanea”, which touches twelve churches in which there are paintings of contemporary painters recalling the theme of the jubilee . In Piego, the painter Fleur Beverley has painted a painting on the wall behind the altar that recalls devotion to Santa Eurosia.