Considered the Queen of the Apuan Alps. Although not the highest peak and not the most difficult to climb, it has struck visitors and observers since ancient times for its undoubted power in the bulk.
Great writers wrote about it, starting with Dante in his Comedy, and travelers and naturalists climbed it since the seventeenth century, but we cannot rule out that someone had already reached its summit before. The ascent by the normal route is very simple and the panorama on the summit is splendid and dominates the whole Apuan chain. It becomes very severe in winter when the snow turns into the insidious Apuan ice and many, too many, face it without due caution. Right on the Pania the greatest number of accidents occur in all the Apuan Alps, many unfortunately fatal, often due to imprudence and inexperience.
Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy within canto XXXII of Hell from verse 22 to 28 mentions it together with Monte Tambura, another massif in the Apuan Alps.
«And under your feet a lake which, for the sake of it, had glass and not semblant water, / … that if Tambernicchi / had fallen on it or Pietrapana, / it would not have cracked from the edge. »
(Dante Alighieri, canto XXXII of Hell, Divine Comedy)
