High up to eastward springs the broken crest of La Vernia, a mass of hard millstone rock (_macigno_) jutting from desolate beds of lime and shale at the height of some 3500 feet above the sea.

It was here, among the sombre groves of beech and pine which wave along the ridge, that S.Francis came to found his infant Order, composed the Hymn to the Sun, and received the supreme honour of the stigmata.

To this point Dante retired when the death of Henry VII.

extinguished his last hopes for Italy.

At one extremity of the wedge-like block which forms La Vernia, exactly on the watershed between Arno and Tiber, stands the ruined castle of Chiusi in Casentino.