The Giovanni Pascoli house museum is a particular and qualified stop on the Puccini itineraries, for the memories it brings back and the valuable documentation that it preserves.

In 1895 Giovanni Pascoli had rented the house of the Cardosi-Carrara, on the hill of Caprona, about 5 Km from Barga, as a country house and moved there with his sister Maria; in 1902, the poet bought the house that was to become his habitual and quiet residence, until her death in April 1912, At that time he alternated teaching commitments (in Bologna, Messina, Pisa and Bologna again) one of the most prolific and happy periods of poetic creation and publication of his works.

The first recorded contact between Pascoli and Puccini dates back to 1897: Pascoli, who at that time had a great passion for the theatre, tried, through some acquaintances to establish contact with Puccini: would it have been possible to collaborate? Puccini let it be known that it would be possible in the future, since at the time he was too busy with Tosca.

At the end of 1897 it was Puccini who contacted the Poet, to commission an epigraph to Guglielmo Lippi (known as Memmo, a close friend of Puccini and Alfredo Caselli, in turn, a close friend of Pascoli), who had died prematurely.

At the beginning of 1903 Puccini heralds a visit to Barga for the following Spring, but a serious car accident which occurred on the night between 25 and 26 February forces him to immobility. The Maestro much appreciated a greeting card sent by the Poet and responds with warmth. A few months later, still forced to remain in Torre del Lago, Puccini, through Alfredo Caselli, makes a request to Pascoli, a sonnet to be published along with an image of him in bed, surrounded by the female figures of his operas, including Madama Butterfly (a promotional idea by the publisher Ricordi). Again in 1903 the project of Puccini to find, close to Casa Pascoli, a house for the Summer holidays was wrecked.

Perhaps the most significant and best known evidence is linked to Madama Butterfly: after the fiasco of the opera at La Scala (17 February 1904), Pascoli immediately conveys his closeness with a prophetic postcard:

Our dear and great Maestro,
the butterfly will fly:
it has its wings spread with powder,
with a few drops here and there,
drops of blood, drops of tears …
Fly, fly, butterfly,
Whose heart cried so much;
and you made your singer cry…
Sing, sing, butterfly,
with your little voice,
with the chirping of your dream,
faint as sleep
smooth like a shadow,
sweet as a tomb,
in the shade of bamboo
in Nagasaki and in Cefù

Needless to say how much Puccini appreciated this.

Puccini made at least two visits to Casa Pascoli: in 1908, along with Guelfo Civinini and Alfredo Caselli and in 1911, along with Caselli and Augusto Guido Bianchi. There remains journalistic and photographic evidence.