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Photo: Wikimedia Commons (see source page)
Abandoned village · 1947
Fabbriche di Careggine
Fabbriche di Careggine, a blacksmiths' village in the Garfagnana, ended up under the waters of the artificial Lake Vagli after the dam was built. It resurfaced when the lake was drained in 1958, 1974, 1983 and 1994, drawing crowds of visitors every time.
Visiting
Before you go
- Getting there
- In the Garfagnana (Lucca), in the Apuan Alps: head for Vagli Sotto, overlooking the lake.
- The visit
- Half a day between the lake and the villages of Vagli.
- When to go
- The next draining has been announced and postponed several times; the Tuscany Region has suggested 2028.
- Good to know
- Outside the drainings nothing of the village can be seen: the reason to go is the lake and the Apuan landscape.
Practical information gathered from official and local sources on 9 October 2026. Opening times and conditions change: always check before you go.
Plan your visit
Where to stay nearby
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History
Fabbriche di Careggine is a ghost village in the province of Lucca, in the comune of Careggine, abandoned in 1947 and then flooded by the waters of the artificial Lake Vagli, created by a hydroelectric dam. Between the 1940s and 1994 the lake was drained four times for dam maintenance, bringing the village back to the surface.
The little village was founded in the 13th century by a colony of blacksmiths from Brescia.
After the Este conquest, from 1755 the village, set to become one of the state's main iron suppliers, was given a mill and enjoyed transport concessions. The Via Vandelli dates from this period: linking Modena to Massa, it crossed the Edron stream first on a wooden footbridge, then on a masonry bridge. At the end of the 18th century Francesco III d'Este, Duke of Modena, granted the local craftsmen many privileges to support their work, including exemption from military service.
The decline of the road coincided with the decline of Fabbriche, whose residents had to go back to the old trades of farming and shepherding to survive hunger and famine.
At the start of the twentieth century the village's economy recovered thanks to marble quarrying near Vagli, so much so that in 1906-1907 a small hydroelectric plant was built on the Edron to serve the marble basins.
In 1941, under the Fascist regime, the Selt-Valdarno company (today Enel) decided to build a hydroelectric reservoir by damming the Edron in the comune of Vagli Sotto.
Text: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · translated from Italian
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