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A few km from the exit of Highway A1 Valdarno, between Florence and Arezzo you can admire an interesting erosive phenomenon known with the name of Balze. The Balze are one of the most beautiful and fascinating landscape of Valdarno.

These strange natural formations can be seen in the municipalities of Terranova Bracciolini, Castelfranco di Sopra, Pian di Sco, Laterina and Reggello. Since 1998 an area of the Balze wide nearly 3000 hectares in the municipalities of Castelfranco di Sopra, Loro Ciuffenna, Pian di Sco and Terranova Bracciolini, was declared a Protected Natural Area of Local Interest.

The Balze were formed, as has happened in Bryce Canyon in Utah, from sediment deposited by a lake in the Pliocene and Pleistocene, this lake was about 20 km long, occupying the current Valdarno. Over the millennia, when the lake has receded, its sediments have been subjected to a continuous action of erosion by the weather whom have models them until assuming the fascinating shapes known with the name of “Balze”. 

The Balze, with their pinnacle and spire of rocks represent a characteristic landscape, but little known, of the Valdarno, that deserves to be seen, also Leonardo da Vinci remained fascinated and he represented it in some of his paintings, like for example in the background landscape of the Mona Lisa.