On his journey from Padua to Tuscany’s Lunigiana in 1306, Dante Alighieri passed by the Pietra di Bismantova and, like many before and after him, was so enraptured by it that not only did he make a stop in order to walk to the top;

he was even said to have taken inspiration from it for the description of the Purgatory mountain in the Divine Comedy, that is a high mountain rising like an island, whose sides are rugged rocky crags and whose top is a large flat space.