The Valley has an ancient history.
Excavations and findings have helped to demonstrate human presence since the Palaeolithic (4O-5O thousand years ago).
There were substantial settlements in the Age of Bronze.
Surely there came Etruscan outposts, but then were the Liguri - Apuani to populate around 300 BC.
The "Liguri Apuani", or simply Apuani were a people belonging to the ancient Ligurian. They were also called "Liguri mountani" or Sengauni. It was a confederation of Ligurian tribes who lived on the heights of the current Tuscan-Emilian Apennines and the current Apuan Alps.
Land of passage and conjunction with the North padano, once the Roman cycle, was for centuries subject to administrative and political divisions that still are felt.
The same difficulty to use a name including the entire Valley is a confirmation.
And so we use different terms identifiers as points of view and cultural legacies: Garfagnana, or High Serchio Valley, Media Valle del Serchio or Low Garfagnana.
Equally valid, but equally unlikely to provide representation to the organic unity of the territory.
Fortresses, forts and castles that mark his territory that recall the past when Lucchesi, Fiorentini and Estensi had transformed the Valley Serchio in an international meeting: Barga was part of seigniory Medici, the Este had Castelnuovo and much of the Garfagnana, Lucca had Castiglione, Gallicano, Minucciano and "Tre Terre".
With all the consequences that such a condition involved.
Among Estensi Lucchesi and have fought wars for the Garfagnana, with lots of attacks, devastation, looting.
To resolve disputes between the Florentines and Lucchesi for Serchio even took an intervention by the Pope
Was the generous participation of the youth of the valley on the motions for Unity and Independence of the homeland.
The first three-coloured, Italian flag in the Valley was waved in 1831 in Pieve Fosciana.