With special thanks to Katia
The name Lago Santo is of very ancient origin and its location in one of the once most inaccessible and wild areas of the Apennines, once populated by large animals such as bears and wolves, has always fueled an aura of sacredness and mystery around it: the name "santo" seems to be linked to religious and devotional facts.
The historical news on this basin are those relating to the bloody battles that took place between the Communities of Rocca and Pievepelago on one side and that of Barga, in Garfagnana, on the other, due to the possession and exploitation of the woods, pastures and waters of the Lago Santo area and the Valle delle Fontanacce. In fact, due to ancient feudal concessions dating back to the Middle Ages, the Municipality of Barga, a territory under Florentine Grand Ducal sovereignty, had dominion over a part of the territory that was located beyond the watershed in Emilian territory, first part of the Este territory of the Duke of Ferrara and then of the Community of Modena.
Since the border was not well marked, both communities claimed for themselves the right to graze and exploit the woods and this gave rise to fights, seizures of livestock, retaliations such as what happened in the summer of 1550 when the Mayor of Barga reported a felling of fir and beech trees in the Barga territory carried out by the Ferrarese near Lago Santo.
Since the beginning of the 15th century, the Governments of the two States had made official attempts to find a satisfactory solution to the problem, also resorting to external arbitration such as the one in 1420 entrusted to the Senate of the Municipality of Siena which led to an initial boundary on the land with the placing of "termini" or boundary stones.
However, the problem was not solved soon after when the boundary stones were removed, so that a hundred years later it was necessary to resort to a new arbitration by the Duke of Savoy, who appointed his State Councilor and his son as experts, who, at the end of 1568, issued an "award" with which the new borders were fixed. The "salient" of Barga (this is how the grand ducal territory on the Po side was identified) was delimited by the stretch of ridge between the top of Porticciola and that of Monte Figurito (today called Cime di Romecchio) and descended on one side just above the village of Tagliole and on the other to half of the adjacent Valle delle Fontanacce.
In 1844, the Treaty of Florence, stipulated between the Este Government and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, set their respective borders on the watershed ridge: the inhabitants of Pievepelago took advantage of this to exploit the woods and pastures on the Po Valley side to their advantage. But administrative sovereignty is one thing, while the patrimonial right claimed over this area for centuries by the Municipality of Barga is another, so in Court it was definitively established that the territory was to be understood as a "promiscuous communion of goods" in which the woods were to be considered the full property of the Municipality of Barga while the pastures were to be used in alternate years by the two contenders.
Only at the end of the 1950s did the municipalities of Pievepelago and Barga reach an agreement that put an end to the centuries-old issue, definitively marking the border at the watershed ridge. In the meantime, before the Second World War, Lago Santo had been the subject of a grandiose project by the engineer Lapo Farinata degli Uberti, who had the idea of creating the large ski and tourist area of Valle delle Pozze (today's Val di Luce).
The Florentine engineer intended to take the waters of the lake which, thanks to a canal that would have passed under Mount Feminamorta, would have arrived in the Alta Valle delle Pozze, where in Pian d'Asprella, after the construction of a dam, a large artificial basin would have been created intended to feed a hydroelectric plant that would have provided energy to the entire area.
