For a thousand years Sarzano has been a garrison of civilisation in the heart of the Reggio Apennines.
The hill of Sarzano has always been a cornerstone of the road that in Reggio Emilia goes towards the Tuscan-Emilian ridge to descend in Lunigiana and Garfagnana to the Ligurian Sea. The human presence in this Apennines is witnessed in the Bronze Age. The human existence has been deduced since the time of the ancestors of Matilda of Canossa (the deed of purchase of this feud, the first historical document, is dated 958 A.D. ).
Although the territory around Sarzano was already frequented at the time of the Ligurian presence and the subsequent Roman domination, only during the Canossa dynasty it became a significant historical crossroads, halfway between Langobardia and Tuscia.
In the centuries after Matilda, alternating events saw the protagonists of the local lordships and then the church.
After the long possession of the Church, towards the end of the twentieth century, the monumental complex of Sarzano came into property to the Municipality of Casina that, with the help of the competent institutions, it has begun a conservative restoration and an archaeological excavation that have returned to the castle its history.
Today the complex of Sarzano includes a lower part, that of the village and residential buildings, and an upper one: the castle itself on the top of the hill.
