Nestled in between the Apennine Mountains in Tuscany, there’s a quiet little town known as Poppi. One of the distinctive features of this hidden treasure is the medieval castle that towers over the town from the top of the hill. Poppi was a refreshing change of pace from the busy life of Florence and Rome where the streets were crowded with tourists and scammers shoving selfie sticks in your face. We were only in Poppi one night and we stayed in a convent during our stay. I’m not going to lie, past negative experiences left me kind of freaked out to stay in a convent but it was the cleanest place we’d stayed in all trip, the sisters were very kind to us, and they had breakfast laid out for us is the morning.

But anyways, back to the castles. We got to tour two of them as a class, Castello Romena and Castello di Poppi. Both of the castles were originally owned by the Guidi family who apparently owned many castles in the area back in the day. The Poppi castle was in much better shape than the Castello Romena and it contained one of the coolest rooms I’d ever been in. The library of the castle has a collection of 25,000 books; some dating back as early as the 11^th century. In addition to already being the coolest library in existence, they even have a first edition copy of Dante’s Inferno which only adds to the coolness factor. The castle has been kept in great condition so besides the library you can climb on up to the bell tower or descend into the tower where prisoners were kept. We peeked through a little hole and saw a skeleton that scared me at first glance because I wasn’t expecting it. I don’t know if it was a real skeleton or not, but if it was real can you imagine how cool that would have been?! Dante was actually inspired by the castles’ prisoner towers when he wrote his layers of hell for Inferno. Poppi might not have been one of the craziest places we’ve been to but it for sure was incredibly nice to visit.